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Epochs of Modern History 



EDITED BY 
EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A., J. SURTEES PHILLPOTTS, B.C.L. 

AND 

C. COLBECK, M.A. 



THE EARLY TUDORS 



REV. C. E. MOBERLY 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 

Edited by Rev. G. W. Cox and Charles Sanket, M.A. 
Eleven volumes, 18mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. Price per 
vol., $1.00. The set, Eosburgh style.gilt top,in box, $11.00. 

Troy — Its Legend, History, and Literature. By S. G. W. 
Benjamin. 

The Greeks and the Persians. By G. W. Cox. 

The Athenian Ennpire. By G. W. Cox. 

The Spartan and Theban Supremacies. By Charles Sankey. 

The Macedonian Empire. By A. M. Curteis. 

Early Rome. By W. Ihne. 

Rome and Carthage. By R, Bosworth Smilh. 

The Gracchi. Marius and Sulla. By A. H. Beesley. 

The Roman Triumvirates By Charles Merivale. 

The Early Empire. By W. Wolfe Capes. 

The Age of the Antonines. By W. Wolfe Capes. 

EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 

Edited by Edward E. Morbis. Eighteen volumes, Ifimo, 
with 77 Maps, Plans, and Tables. Price per vol., $1.00. 
The set, Roxburgh style, gilt tup, in bos, $18.00. 
'The Beginning of the Middle Ages. By R. W. Church. 

'The Normans in Europe. By A. H. Johnson. 

'The Crusades. By G. W. Cox. 

■The Early Plantagenets. By Wm. Stubbs. 

Edward III. By W. Warburton. 

The Houses of Lancaster and York. By .Tames Gairdner. 
"The Era of the Protestant Revolution. By Fl'ederic Seebohm. 
4Th6 Early Tudors. By C. E. Mobe)ly. 

The Age of Elizabeth. By M. Creightnn. 

The Thiity Years' War, 1618-1648. By S. R. Gardiner. 

The Puritan Revolution. By S. R. Gardiner. 

The Fall of the Stuarts. By Edward Hale. 

The English Restoration and Louis XIV By Osmund Airy. 

The Age of Anne. By Edward E. Morris. 

The Early Hanoverians By Edward E. Morris. 

Frederick the Great. By F. W. Longman. 

The French Revolution and First Empire. By W. O'Connor 
Morris. Appendix by Andrew D. White. 

The Epoch of Reform, 1830-1850. By Justin Macarthy. 




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EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY 



THE EARLY TUDORS 



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HENRY VII.: HENRY VIII. 



BY THE 

REV. C. E. MOBERLY, M.A. 

LATK A MASTER IN RUGBY SCHOOL 



WITH MAPS AKD PLANS 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

18S9 



MAY 2 7 1904 






I FtHJSfli 



PREFACE. 



As the plan of works in this Series does not allow 
of systematic references at the foot of the pages to 
larger and more detailed histories of the period, it 
may be well to mention here a few of the books 
which are likely to be most useful to those who wish 
to study it more fully. So far as these are complete 
histories, they must be chiefly modern, as the age was 
not fertile in contemporary narratives. Thus for 
Richard III.'s time Mr. Gairdner's excellent Life of 
that king should be studied, with its appendix on 
Warbeck; for Henry VII. Lord Bacon's Life, which 
has been carefully edited for the Cambridge Univer- 
sity Press by Mr. Lumby. The Stanhope Essay by 
Mr. Williamson on the 'Foreign Commerce of Eng- 
land under the Tudors ' gives ample details on this 
subject in very small cornpass; and the religious 
movement from 1485 to 1509 is described to perfec- 
tion in Mr. Seebohm's delightful work on Colet, 
Erasmus, and More, and in Cooper's Life of the 
Lady Margaret. 

For Henry VIII.' s reign much has been done of 
late years, above all by Mr. Brewer in his celebrated 
Prefaces to the papers of the reign in the Rolls 



VI Preface. 

Series (which have been published separately in two 
volumes), illustrating the years from 1509 to 1529, 
The history of the early Reformation is given with 
much detail and liveliness in Dean Hook's Lives of 
Archbishops Morton, Warham, and Cranmer; the 
Dissolution of the Monasteries and other measures 
of the reign have been examined with great care in 
Dixon's ' History of the Church of England,' a work 
of unusual merit. The subject of religion is admi- 
rably treated as regards Germany in Ranke's * His- 
tory of the Reformation,' which Miss Austen has 
translated. 

It is hardly necessary to refer to Mr. Froude's 
history of Henry VHI., for no one can hope to 
know the period without reading it diligently. True 
it is that this industrious and most eloquent writer 
may probably fail in inspiring readers with his own 
admiration for Henry's actions, which indeed he has 
of late shown some disposition to reconsider. But, 
qualify his verdict as we will, we shall still find 
abundant profit as well as pleasure in reading his 
great work, especially if we check and perhaps 
correct his view of some great events by comparing 
with it Mr. Friedmann's recently published Life of 
Anne Boleyn, which is full of important information 
and shows the hand of a master throughout. For 
Scottish affairs Mr. Burton's * History of Scotland ' 
is all that can be desired. 

Lastly, it may be permitted to refer to some very 
interesting papers on Henry VII. and Henry VIII. 



Preface. vii 

contained in Bishop Stubbs's recently published volume 
of Oxford Lectures. No use has been made of these 
in the present work, which was in type before they 
appeared ; its writer ventures to remark that, where 
he himself has praised Henry VII., he often finds 
with great pleasure that the Bishop does the same. It 
is somewhat disquieting to observe that the Lectures 
attribute to Henry VIII. far more innate power and 
ruling faculty than has been here traced in his ad- 
ministration, civil, military, and religious. It may 
perhaps serve as an excuse for differing from so 
high an authority that Mr. Friedmann, after taking 
a connected view from without of Henry's entire 
management of home and foreign affairs, and of 
the opinions with regard to him expressed by foreign 
sovereigns and their correspondents, is inclined to 
place him lower, even in mere intellect, than any 
English writer has yet ventured to do. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGI? 

National unity from despotism ...... I 

Despotism in Spain ....... 3 

Despotism in France ....... 7 

Despotism in England ....... 9 

CHAPTER II. 

Henry VII. 's claim to the tarone 14 

The Lady Margaret . . . • . . . 15 

Henry's invasion . . . . . . . .16 

Battle of Bosworth Field 18 

Henry's title to the throne . . . . . .21 

The Coronation . . . . . . . . 22 

Restoration of persons attainted . . . . -23 

The Pestilence ........ 25 

English feeling under it . . . . . . .26 

CHAPTER III. 

Parliament of 1485 27 

Rebellion of the Staffords ...... 28 

Causes of Yorkist feeling ....... 29 

Simnel. Battle of Stoke 30 

Martial law . . . . . . . . -33 

Affairs of Bretagne . . . . . . . 34. 

French policy there ........ 36 

Northern and Scottish rebellions . . . . . 33 

Quasi- war with France. Peace of Etaples . , -39 

CHAPTER IV. 

Warbeck widely supported . , . . . .42 

Warbeck in Ireland and Scotland . . ... . 45 

Cornish rebellion. Blackbeath Field . . . • 47 



X Conients. 

PAGB 

Warbeck in Devonshire ...... 49 

The Intercursus Magnus ....... 50 

CHAPTER V. 

Charles VIII. in Italy 5 1 

Royal marriages. The Ita'ian League .... 54 

Crusade refused ........ 56 

Prince Arthur and Katherine ..... 57 

Plan for Katherine's second marriage . . . -59 

The Archduke Philip in England ..... 60 

Empson and Dudley ....... 63 

Death of Henry VII 64 

CHAPTER VI. 

State of Ireland 65 

Poynings' Daws ........ 66 

Fraternity of St. George ....... 69 

Laws of Henry VII. ....... 69 

The Star Chamber . . . . . . . .71 

Navigation Law, &c. ....... 73 

Trade with the Netherlands ...... 73 

French trade ........ 75 

Voyages of discovery. Vasco de Gama. Columbus . .76 

The Cabots ......... 77 

CHAPTER VII. 
Spirit of the Renaissance ....... 79 

Enthusiasm for Latin and Greek authors. Colet, More . 80 

Works of Erasmus .... ... 86 

Schools and colleges for the New Learning ... 88 
Printers. Wynkyn de Worde. Poetry of the time . -91 

Prose of the period. The ' Utopia ' .... 93 

Cardinal Morton and Church Reform . . . .94 

Erasmus on pilgrimages ...... 96 

Buildings, &c., of the jDcriod ...... 98 

CHAPTER VIH. 

Henry VIII. fond of the navy . . . . ■ . . loi 

, Execution of Empson and Dudley .... 103 



Contents. 



Marriage with Katharine of Aragon . 

Death of the Lady Margaret .... 

Disciplinary laws ..;... 

Argument on Church privileges 

James IV. of Scotland. The Bartons 

War with France : how regarded . 

CHAPTER IX. 
The League of Cambray ..... 

Resistance of Venice . . " . 

Henry VIII. joins the Holy League; his failure 

Naval operations ..... 

Invasion of France ...... 

Battle of Plodden Field .... 

Home effects of the war ..... 

CHAPTER X. 
English trade in the Netherlands 
Cort.ish mining . . . . 

Jealousy of foreigners ..... 

Population shifting in England 
Depopulation of the rural districts 
The rise in rents . 
Scotland under Queen Margaret 
The government of Ireland .... 
Vain attempts at a Crusade . . . . 

CHAPTER XI. 
The French in Italy. Battle of Marignano 
Wolsey's administration .... 

Field of the Cloth of Gold: its uselessness 
The Duke of Buckingham executed 
Henry's treachery to Francis . . . . 

The War of Pavia . . . . 

Turkish conquest of Rhodes .... 
War taxation in England .... 
Sack of Rome ....... 



PAGB 

[04 



Contents. 



CHAPTER XII. 

PAGE 

Old anti-Papal laws 150 

Forerunners of the Reformation. Doctrine of Luther . 151 

Henry VIII. Defender of the Faith 155 

Beginning of the Divorce question . . . .156 

Its dangers to England . . . . . . -158 

Commission of Campeggio . . , . . ■ '59 
Fall of Wolsey . . . . . . . . .162 

His arrest and death . ... . . . .166 

The first Reforming Parliament. Prannmire against the 

clergy . . . . . . . . .167 

Resistance of the clergy overruled . . . . . 1 70 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Appeal to the Universities on the Divorce. . . .171 

Cranmer's Court at Dunstable. Popular feeling towards Anne 173 

• 175 

d' Hire . 176 

. 180 

182 

. 1S4 



Conditional excommunication of Henry . 
The Nun of Kent. Peter's Pence. The conge 
Northern conspiracies. Rising in Ireland 
Death of Fisher and More .... 
Character of Sir T. More .... 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Bull of Deposition drawn up 
Execution of Anne Boleyn . 
Henry's Protestant leanings 
State of the monasteries 
The Universities visited .... 
Visitation of the Monasteries 
The Louth rebellion ..... 
The Yorkshire insurrection . 
The ' Bishops' Book ' . . , 

Prince Edward born. Case of Lambert 



1 88 
189 
192 
193 
195 
195 
199 

20I 
205 
206 



CHAPTER XV. 
Lord Exeter and the Poles. The Six Articles . . . 209 
Legislation for Wales 213 



Contents. 



XIII 



The alliance wiili Cleves. Fall of Cromwell . 
The Reformation in Scotland .... 

Solway Moss. Death of James V. Attempts at Union 
Lord Leonard Grey in Ireland .... 
Katherine Howard. Death of Lady Salisbury 



PAGE 

. 214 

217 

. 219 

222 

. 224 



CHAPTER XVL 

Charle.i V. fails at Algiers ...... 225 

Henry joins Charles against Francis and the Turks . 227 

French attack on Portsmouth ...... 229 

The currency debased ....... 230 

Execution of Lord Surrey . . . . . -231 

Henry's last persecutions; his last foundations . . 233 

Katherine Parr ........ 234 

Death of Henry . . . . . . . .235 

Henry's influence on the Church ..... 236 

Civil laws of Henry VHI 238 

Trials under Henry VHI. ...... 24O 

Poetry of the period ....... 240 

The stage and prose ........ 242 

Science ......... 243 

Character of the middle classes ..... 244 

Effect of Henry VHI.'s institutions .... 246 

INDEX 247 



MAPS. 
England and Wales, 1485-1547 
Campaign of Terouenne 
Battle of Flodden Field . 
Cleves, Mark, Berg, Jqliers 



To face Tit'efagi 



119 
214 



THE CHIEF EUROPEAN SOVERE 'GNS AND 
MEMBERS OF ROYAL FAMILIES. 

(1485-1547.) 

A. Emperors of Germany, 

1. Frederic III. (first Emperor of the Austrian House of 

Hapsburg), King of the Romans 1440; crowned 
Emperor 1459; died 1493. 

2. Maximilian I. (son of FredericIII.),Kingof the Romans 

i486, never crowned; styles himself ' Emperor Elect' 
from 1503; died 1519. Married (a) Mary of Bur- 
gundy; (b') Anne of Bretagne; (by proxy — marriage 
dissolved) ; (r) Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan. 

Has issue — («) The Archduke Philip, who inherits 
the Netherlands from his mother, Mary of Bur- 
gundy, 1483; marries Juana of Castile 1505; 
dies 1506. [b') Margaret of Savoy ; betrothed to 
Charles VIII. ; married to the Duke of Savoy. 

3. Charles V. (son of Philip and Juana), King of Spain 

1516; King of the Romans 1519; crowned Emperor 
1531; abdicated 1558. 

B. Sovereigns of Sixain. 

f Ferdinand King of Aragon . . 1479-1504 

' I Isabella Queen of Castile . . 1474-1504 

2. juana Queen of Spain . . . 1504-1516 

3. Charles V 1516-1558 



Cliief European Sovereigns. XV 

C. Kings of France. 

1. Louis XI. . . 1461-14S3 

2. Charles VITI. . . 1483-149S "t Successively married 

3. Louis XII. . . 1498-1515 J to Anne of Bretagne. 

4. Francis I. . . . 15 15-1547 

D. Kings of England. 

1. Richard III 1483-1485 

2. Henry VII 1485-1509 

3. Henry VIII 1 509-1 547 

E. Topes. 

1. Alexander VI 1492-1503 

2. Pius III 1503 

3. Julius II 1503-15 ^3 

4- LeoX 1515-1521 

5. Adrian VL 1522-1523 

6. Clement VII 1523-1534 

7. Paul III 1534-1549 

F. Members of the English Royal Family. 
{a) The daughters of Henry VII. : — 

1. Margaret, marrieJ (a) James IV. of Scotland; (/') Lord 

Angus; (r) Lord Methuen; and was mother of {ci) 
James V. of Scotland ; (/') of Lady Margaret Lennox 
(mother of Lord Darnley). 

2. Mary, married (<?) Louis XII. ; (/;) Charles Brandon, 

Duke of Suffolk; and was the grandmother of Lady 
Jane Grey. 
[b) The House of Lancaster (descended from John of Gaunt 
through the Beauforts) : — 
The Lady Margaret (mother of Henry VII.). 
(f) The House of York (descended from Lionel Duke of 
Clarence, the third son, and Thomas of Woodstock, the 
sixth son, of Edward HI) : — 



Chief European Sovereigns. 

1. Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV. 

2. Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., married Henry VII., 

died 1501. 

3. The Earl of Lincoln (killed at Stoke 1487) and the 

Earl of Suffolk (beheaded i5i3),sons of Elizabeth, 
sister of Edward IV. 

4. The Earl of Warwick, son of George Duke of Clarence 

(beheaded 1499), and his sister. 

5. The Countess of Salisbury (beheaded 1539); had issue 

(rt) Lord Montagu (beheaded 1539); (1^) Cardinal 
Pole; (if) Sir Geoffrey Pole (and others). 

6. The Marquis of Exeter (beheaded 1539); his mother 

was Lady Courtenay, daughter of Edward IV. 

7. The Duke of Buckingham (beheaded 1521) was de- 

scended from Thomas of Woodstock, sixth son of 
Edward III. 

8. The Earl of Surrey (beheaded 1546) ; had the same de- 

scent through his mother, who was daughter of the 
Duke of Buckingham. 

G. Members of the Scottish Royal Family. 

1. Mary (Queen of Scots), daughter of James V. 

2. The Duke of Albany, son of a younger brother of 

James III. 

3. The Earl of Arran, son of a sister of James III. 

4. Margaret Lady Lennox, daughter of Queen Margaret 

of Scotland by Lord Angus; mother of Henry 
Darnley. 



THE EARLY TUDORS. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE GROWTH OF DESPOTISM IN EUROPE DURING THE 
FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 

For those who, like ourselves, are trained under free 
institutions, it is hard to realise that great 
nations are generally those which have been despotism™ 
long under the stern discipline of a despot- 
ism at last shaken off. Yet it cannot be denied that this 
form of government, extending over the whole of a large 
country, and ruling all things within it, has been more able 
than any other to create a strong sense of nationality over- 
powering narrow local differences, to establish thorough 
internal security, and to direct the people to enterprises 
requiring great exertion in the general cause, and leading 
to strong enthusiasms, whether through defeat or victory. 
It has been mostly when their energies have been thus 
guided that nations have forgotten the jealousies of pro- 
vince against province, county against county, district 
against district, and learned that the members of one State 
are immeasurably nearer to one another than any foreigner 
can be. And when this feeling for the first time gains 
strength, and a great nation is brought to feel its own 
I 



2 The Early Tudors. 1400- 

unity, how many important consequences spring from the 
change ! A people which has been thus ruled, if only 
the despotism does not last long enough to break its 
spirit, is sure to feel intensely. Loyalty to the power 
which has made it one becomes a passion, sometimes 
even a madness. Bravery makes no account of its own 
life or of other men's. Self-devotion prevails in many 
of its most striking forms. High-spirited men become 
proud of laying down their freedom at the feet of a 
master who gives them in exchange for it the prospect 
of ruling over their fellow-men as his deputies. In such 
times we must not indeed expect to find justice, humanity, 
and peacefulness, or even truth and honour as now 
understood ; these are plants which spring only from 
the soil of freedom. But we can say that the national 
mind, in order that it may some time feel truth and 
right strongly, is at any rate learning to feel somethmg 
strongly. That something may be, and often is, perverse ; 
indeed it is with a people as with a child, in whom 
we tolerate a certain violence and misdirection of will, 
because we know that such strength is the very seed- 
bed of future excellence, and that no one can be really 
great of whom we cannot say that ' quidquid volet 
valde volet.' Such, then, is on the whole the meaning of 
those who say that few nations become really great 
without having been under despotism for a time. In 
this sense eminent Italian politicians, even of the present 
day, sometimes hold to Macchiaveili's opinion, that it is 
the greatest of national misfortunes to their countrymen 
never to have been welded together by passing through 
this stage ; and far-seeing thinkers among ourselves have 
considered the present constitution of Russia not un- 
favourable to her chance of being great at last, seeing that 
despotism has certainly built up her unity and inspired 



-1500 ■ Growth of Despotism in Europe. 3 

her with the spirit of obedience and self-sacrifice, without 
hitherto breaking down the energy which will some time 
achieve her political freedom. 

Whether the history of England from the sixteenth 
century onwards proves the truth of this theory will be 
best settled when we have gone through it. It is plain 
enough, at any rate, that a despotism did establish itself 
under the Tudors, and that many of the qualities likely 
to characterise a nation thus governed did, in fact, show 
themselves in Englishmen. We do, as a matter of fact, 
see them proud of their national unity, bearing them- 
selves haughtily towards foreigners, immoderately fond 
of aggressive expeditions, recklessly brave, deeply and 
sometimes even insanely loyal. The object of this work 
is to trace the rise of the autocracy which had these 
effects ; and, as the history of England is seldom or 
never so cut off from that of the Continent as to have 
nothing in common with what goes on there at the same 
time, it will be well, by way of introduction, to show that 
increasing despotism was in the fifteenth century the law, 
so to speak, of advance in the countries of Western 
Europe. Thus we shall presently be enabled to see 
what changes among ourselves sprang from direct imita- 
tion of our neighbours, and what others arose from causes 
of a general character affecting all countries alike. 

Spain, as might be expected from the mixture of 
Eastern blood in her people, and the military 
type of her civilisation, had been first to enter in'spain.'" 
upon the course of absolutism which for a 
time raised her power to such a portentous height, and 
then laid it prostrate. Indeed her feuds of the Trastamare 
family had been as effective as our Wars of the Roses a 
hundred years later in clearing off the turbulent nobles, 
and thus enabling the Crown of Castile to strengthen 



4 The Early Tudor s. 1390- 

itself by the help of the Commons. Under the young 
Henry III. (1390), the husband of Catherine of Lan- 
caster, the Third Estate was in remarkable prosperity; 
commerce and manufactures improved greatly, and the 
history of the country might have been different but 
for Henry's death in 1406, at the early age of twenty- 
eight. He was succeeded by his son, John II., whose 
reign of forty-eight years was little else than a per- 
petual conspiracy against his subjects' freedom. Aided 
by his imperious minister Alvaro de Luna, he excluded 
from the royal Council the deputies of the Commons, 
raised taxes without legislative sanction, and issued 
pragmaticas asserting his own right to make laws for 
his subjects. When opposition to these arbitrary mea- 
sures was threatened, he devised and carried out success- 
fully a wicked scheme for dividing the popular party. 
Some of the towns were induced, first to petition that 
they might defray the expenses of their deputies during 
the session of the Cortes; and then, with a surprising 
want of political foresight, to allow them to be excused 
attendance altogether, in older to save the same charges. 
Thus after a while only eighteen towns sent deputies, 
the rest being obliged to entrust their interests to these. 
So successfully were the seeds of division thus sown, that 
in 1 506, when some of the excluded towns wished to have 
their ancient rights" back, they were vigorously opposed 
by the privileged cities, which maintained that the right 
of representation was theirs alone. The policy of 
John II. was followed by Henry IV., Isabella of Castile's 
elder brother, who also threw the trade of the country 
into utter disorder by debasing the coinage, besides 
demoralising society by his own bad example. Isabella 
herself, on her accession in 1474, resolved to resume the 
old policy of relying on the Commons, to which she was 



-1592 Growth of Despotism in Europe. 5 

the more inclined from her earnest desire to benefit the 
people which she ruled. By decrees obtained from the 
courts of justice she wrested from the nobles many of the 
estates, annuities, and other grants which they had un- 
constitutionally got from her predecessors. Besides this, 
both she and her husband, Ferdinand, King of Aragon, 
employed men of humble birth in posts which had been 
always held by nobles ; above all, she adopted, and 
placed under the patronage of the Crown, the ' Holy 
Hermandad,' an association of the towns for the repres- 
sion of violence ; using it, in defiance of the nobles, as a 
national police which she could entirely trust. It must 
not for a moment be thought that her patronage of the 
people aimed in the least at restoring their ancient 
liberties : on the contrary, by establishing and enthusias- 
tically supporting the Inquisition in her dominions, 
Isabella made any return to constitutional methods im- 
possible, besides deeply staining her own character for 
honour, patriotism, and humanity. Satisfied with making 
the towns prosper materially, and with using their support 
against the grandees, she never foresaw that they would 
so soon be trying to wrest from her grandson by force of 
arms the liberty which she denied them. Few passages 
of history are sadder than the account of their rebellion 
against the young Charles V. in 1 520 ; when, amidst a host 
of quite rational petitions for the better conduct of justice, 
for the relief of taxation, for a native administration, for 
the abolition of all privileges obtained at the expense of 
the Commons, for the reform of the Cortes, and for 
sessions once in three years at least, they still, short- 
sighted like their fathers, demanded that the estates of 
the nobles should be re-annexed to the Crown — as if they 
wished to destroy all barriers against despotism except 



6 77^1? Early Tudor s. 1461- 

their own. Accordingly, when their forces were beaten 
on the fatal field of Villalar, and their leaders sent to 
execution by Charles's ministers, the mainspring of popular 
freedom in Spain was broken, and they entered upon a 
long period of decay which has not closed even now, and 
which hardly required that Philip II. should ensure it by 
destroying, as he did in 1 592, the last fragments of real 
power possessed by the Cortes both in Castile and in 
Aragon. These changes were the more melancholy 
because Spain had in her old institutions a thoroughly 
good foundation for rational freedom. Her Cortes dated 
from two hundred years before the time of Simon de 
Montfort, and had the completest control over state 
affairs. The accession of each fresh sovereign required 
their sanction, and they exercised most fully those 
powers of remonstrating against grievances and of voting 
supplies which have always been the two pivots of Eng- 
lish freedom. In one point they went beyond us ; for 
their petitions, if accepted by the King, had at once the 
force of law. In Aragon, where the ancient liberties were 
even stronger than in Castile, the ' Justicia ' judged 
officially and of right whether the King's letters were 
genuine and his acts constitutional ; while the acknow- 
ledged privileges of the kingdom acted as Magna Charta 
did among ourselves. Catalonia and Valencia again had 
all the free spirit wliich goes with maritime enterprise. 
Here the traders were often knights, all being held equal 
within the mercantile guilds, and the sons of merchants 
valued as high as those of noblemen if hostages were 
required in war. No cause less baleful than the bigotry 
which created the Inquisition could have destroyed such 
safeguards and the high hopes which might have been 
founded on them. 



-1483 Growth uf Despotism m Europe. 7 

Before the end of the fifteenth century, a similar 
struggle with the nobles in France had also ended in 
favour of the Crown. Yet no sovereign could , 

have been weaker than Louis XI. at his acces- l?f tvance* 
sion in 1461, and when, four years later, his 
nobles began the war of the ' Bien Public ' against him, he 
was surrounded by great feudatories, all of whom he had 
offended bitterly. Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 
held, in France, Burgundy proper, with Artois and 
Franche-Comte ; beyond it, Brabant, Limburg, Hainault, 
and the wealthy cities of Flanders ; and was on the point 
of excluding France from all communication with the 
rest of Europe, except through his States, by seizing the 
Provencal dominions of Rene of Anjou. The Dukes of 
Bretagne and Bourbon, and the Count of Armagnac with 
his Gascons, were equally opposed to Louis ; and there 
was not one of these potentates who would have scrupled 
for a moment to call in against him the English or any 
other foreigners. In spite of all this, he succeeded by 
unresting vigilance and craft in baffling them one by one, 
and in establishing his own power on the ruin of theirs. 
On the other hand, the Commons were with him, and 
favour to them was a ruling principle of his reign. 
He was never tired of encouraging trade (as when he 
founded the silk manufacture in France) or of increasing 
the privileges of the cities. As his reign advanced, and 
enemy after enemy fell before him, agriculture flourished 
more and more from the ever-increasing security of the 
country. His taxation was heavy, for he bought off such 
enemies as Edward IV. instead of fighting them ; yet, 
in spite of Commines' invidious comparison between his 
revenue of 4,700,000 francs and the 1,800,000 paid under 
his father Charles VII., there is no appearance that his 
imposts were considered excessive in his lifetime. Such 



8 The Early Tudors. 1 461 -1483 

were some of the points marking liis government of the 
masses ; he was to the best of his knowledge a supporter 
of the- low against the high. Yet all that he tiied to 
do on their behalf was more than counterbalanced by 
his masterful administration. Other kings had fitfully 
claimed a right to collect taxes by their sole authority ; 
precedents to that effect had been common in the reigns 
of John, Charles v., Charles VI., and Charles VII. But 
Louis all through his long reign of twenty-two years, 
never raised money in any other way, and thus made 
his people forget the very notion of freedom. For, though 
isolated thinkers like Philippe de Commines still held 
that a king who levies money unconstitutionally is 
tyrannous and violent, and that, as long as he does so, 
he will never be really strong, the States-General had 
altogether forgotten such ideas when they assembled at 
Tours after Louis's death to provide for the regency. Al- 
though they took at first a high tone, and claimed the 
abolition of the ' taille ' and other arbitrary taxes, they 
still allowed themselves to be worsted by a manoeuvre 
of the Court, and granted the new king the right to levy 
the taxes of Charles VII., with an addition of twenty-five 
per cent. Their stipulation that this power should be 
treated as a concession of their own, and last for only two 
years, after which the States were to be assembled again, 
hardly looks like a serious attempt at freedom, when we 
remember that a French king could get his revenue feom 
the Provincial Councils much more easily than he could 
from the States-General, and was therefore most unwilling 
to summon the latter, at the risk of remonstrances against 
every act of his government and every detail of his house- 
hold arrangements. Thus Louis XL, from the success 
with which he organised a system of arbitrary taxation, 
and established it by means of his personal popularity, 



1399' H8 5 Groivth of Despotis7n in Euiope. g 

must needs be considered as one of the great overthrowcrs 
of liberty in France. As to other points of administra- 
tion, it is ahiiost superfluous to remark how absolute he 
was. No purely patriotic care for his subjects' welfare 
can be ascribed to the king who had men tried before 
judges who were to have their property if they were 
found guilty ; nor can he be considered tender of their 
lives who ordered his guards to shoot down every one 
who came near his palace walls before a stated hour in 
the morning or of their personal freedom who enclosed 
them at pleasure in iron cages. We must, therefore, 
ascribe his care for commerce and the towns to the ab- 
solute necessity under which he lay of finding popular 
support against his too powerful feudatories. That 
this view of interest ripened into a positive sympathy 
with the industrious classes, which showed itself in 
many simple and natural acts of kindness, we are in no 
degree called upon to deny. But it is not the less true 
that he demoralised these very classes, first through 
the crooked contrivances by which he quelled their op- 
pressors, and then still more completely by his resolution 
to allow them nothing like political as distinct from 
municipal freedom ; and thus left them at his death pre- 
pared to submit to any tyranny which the course of time 
might produce. 

It is not necessary to enumerate the various tyrannies 
which had raised themselves at the time we are considering 
upon the ruins of popular freedom in every 
great city of Italy, with the one exception of Ya^n^l^xiA 
Venice ; nor yet those which the weakness of 
emperors like Frederic III. had allowed to begin in the 
various States of Germany. But the last Plantagenet 
reigns in England are so important as paving the way for 
the Tudor despotism, that a few words must needs be 



lo The Early Tiidors. I399~ 

said upon them, under the guidance of the latest and 
most learned of our constitutional historians. 

The fifteenth century may be said to begin with the 
accession of the Lancastrian dynasty in 1399. As 
regards the points on which political writers most fre- 
quently dwell, Henry IV. and Henry V. were strongly 
inclined — the former from his defective title and the latter 
from an innate power of influencing men as he would — 
to a really constitutional government. Again and again 
did Henry IV. listen to the remonstrances of his Parlia- 
ments ; as in 1401, when they claimed that he should 
accept no account of their proceedings except from 
themselves ; in 1404, when he consented on their peti- 
tion to remove any councillor distasteful to them, and 
in particular to dismiss all aliens from the Queen's 
service ; in 1406, when they insisted that he should 
give an account of his expenditure and dismiss ' the 
rascally crew ' which composed his household ; and in 
1407, when the Commons protested against any bill of 
supply originating with the Lords. Besides this, parlia- 
mentary grants to him were strictly appropriated to their 
intended purposes — a restriction which we are inclined 
to consider an improvement of modern times, and one 
to which even Cromwell as Protector was unwilling to 
submit. The Parliaments of Henry V. were naturally 
compliant, from the overflowing favour with which a 
war in France was regarded, where, as Commines re- 
peatedly notes, every Englishman made sure of enriching 
himself by plunder and the ransom of captives ; thus in 
141 7 and 1419 large subsidies were willingly paid. When, 
however, they did make remonstrances, he was, like his 
father, always ready to attend ; as when they prayed in 
1414 ' that there be never no law made ' (on their petition), 
' and engrossed as statute and law, neither by addition 



-1485 Growth of Despotism hi Europe. 11 

nor diminution, by no manner of term which shall change 
the sentence and the intent asked ' — a point which was 
to come out on a memorable occasion in after-time. 

As to the safety for life under these sovereigns, it can- 
not be called unsatisfactory, except as regards, first, the 
exercise of martial law in war-time, and, secondly, the 
effect of statutes coming from Parliament itself It has 
been well said that, in beheading Scrope and Mowbray 
in 1405, and the Southampton conspirators in 141 5, 
Henry IV. and his son were sowing the wind that 
their dynasty might reap the whirlwind ; inasmuch as 
from these precedents sprang the practice, so universal 
in the Wars of the Roses, of putting the captured leaders 
to death after each battle, either by a mere order, or by 
the sentence of such men as Montague or Tiptoft, who 
tried prisoners ' summarily and plainly, without any noise 
and shew of judgment,' and sometimes according to the 
law of some foreign State where the judge had received 
his university education. As for the barbarous executions 
which followed the statute ' de Haeretico Comburendo,' 
these of course are not technically acts of royal tyranny, 
since the authority for them was parliamentary, and 
grounded on a belief which, though in itself both cruel 
and stupid, had yet darkened all counsel ever since the 
days when it misled the strong intellect of Augustine. 
Here, accordingly, the State, the Crown, and above all 
the Church, had to share the terrible responsibility 
among them. 

There was, therefore, under the early Lancastrian 
kings some ground for the admiration of England, as 
contrasted with France, which is expressed alike by 
Philippe de Commines and by the English Fortescue, 
whom Commines may have seenduringhis exile in France. 
Under these kings we really had what Fortescue calls a 



12 The Early Tiidors. ^399" 

' dominium regale et politicum :' they would not have ven- 
tured, as Edward III. did, to assent to a petition of Par- 
liament, and then a few weeks later to rescind the Act by 
their own authority on the ground that they had ' dis- 
simulated,' never having really intended to grant it. But a 
woful change came over England with the accession of the 
House of York. First the Privy Council began to assume 
the powers which made it such a terrible engine of oppres- 
sion under Henry VII. and his successors. This body 
really had from Parliament a standing authority — to be ex- 
ercised, however, under strict supervision — by which they 
could suspend the execution of various important statutes. 
In pecuniary matters they were authorised in case of emer- 
gency to pledge, up to a certain limited amount, the credit 
of the kingdom — a practice which Commines seems to 
have had in mind when he says that in his judgment such 
emergencies as make it really necessary for kings to collect 
money more quickly than by the normal processes of law 
hardly ever occur. As the king had long ceased to judge 
in person, and the Council was considered chiefly as his 
substitute, its members could not actually try cases. But to 
examine men beforetrialwhen suspected of treason, and to 
rack them for the purpose of extracting evidence, appears, 
in spite of Fortescue's declaration that torture was unknown 
to the English law, to have been thought within the royal 
prerogative, and therefore within the competence of the 
Council. The first registered instances of such torture 
are in 1468, under Edward IV., when more than one of 
Queen Margaret's messengers were burned in the feet 
or racked to make them discover their accomplices. 
The jurisdiction of the Constable under which Tiptoft and 
Montague acted (the latter even impaling prisoners after 
death) was part of the same bad system. Edward IV. 
also introduced the system of perpetual forfeitures for 



-1485 .Groivlh of Despotism in Europe. 13 

treason. Before his time restoration after a period of 
eclipse had been the understood rule ; he set this principle 
absolutely at nought by bestowing the Percy earldom on 
a Nevile and that of Pembroke on a Herbert. When we 
add to these changes the well-known extension in Edv/ard's 
reign of the system of benevolences and forced loans, the 
extreine infrequency of parliaments, and the trivial char- 
acter of the business which they were allowed to take in 
hand, together v/ith the frequent executions of those whom 
the king feared — including his own brother, the Duke of 
Clarence — we shall readily understand what avast breach 
in the Constitution this reign really made ; a breach which 
the reign of Richard III., inclined as he naturally was to 
support the weakness of his title and to put his crimes 
out of remembrance by popular concessions, was much 
too short to repair ; especially as his necessities after a 
while drove him to collect money by methods hardly 
differing from the illegal ones which he had professed to 
abolish. Accordingly, Henry VII. on succeeding to the 
crown found himself very slightly fettered by constitutional 
precedents, and would doubtless have been a violently 
oppressive governor if he had not been far more inclined 
to the sort of chicane natural to one whose early life had 
been passed in avoiding dangers, and who in many things 
kept before his eyes the example of Louis XI. He 
thoroughly realised that to govern as he chose two main 
conditions were required ; he must need few or no sub- 
sidies, and he must avoid the foreign wars which would 
make subsidies indispensable, and which might also raise 
up competitors for the Crown. Such then was the 
starting-point of the prince who was to inaugurate more 
than a hundred years of autocratic government in Eng- 
land. And by keeping these t^vo principles constantly 
in view, he gave a new political character to the century 



14. The Early Tudor s. ^397- 

which followed his accession, Avhich it will, in the follow- 
ing chapters, be our business to trace. 



CHAPTER II. 



HENRY OF RICHMOND. BOSWORTH FIELD. THE CORO- 
NATION. THE SWEATING SICKNESS, I485, i486. 

It is desirable first to sketch the early life and the 
accession of the sovereign who was in so many ways to 
influence the history of England. 

Henry of Richmond could claim a twofold royal or 

quasi-royal descent. His father, Edmund Tudor, by 

creation Earlof Richmond, was son to Catherine of France, 

the widow of Henry V. Obviously no original title to the 

throne could be thus derived, even if it were 

Henry's 

cinim to the ccrtam that Catherme was ever married to 
' '^""^' Owen Tudor (of which unfortunately no evi- 

dence is known to exist) ; yet, with the ideas of succession 
prevalent in those times, such an origin might add force 
to other stronger claims. Henry's maternal descent 
constituted such a claim, inasmuch as his mother, 
Margaret Beaufort, was great-granddaughter to Edward 
IH.'s fourth son, John of Gaunt; and, although the 
Beauforts were illegitimate, yet after their birth John 
married their mother, Catherine Roet (the sister-in-law 
of the poet Chaucer), and succeeded in inducing Richard 
II. to carry through Parliament in 1397 an Act for their 
legitimation, which, however, did not allow them to bear 
the name of Plantagenet. This Act was confirmed in 
1407 by Henry IV., who seems to have thought that 
by introducing the words ' excepta dignitate regia ' into 
Richard's original grant, as preserved in the Patent Rolls, 



-1485 . Henry of Richmoftd. 15 

he was barring the Beauforts from succession to the 
throne ; although the document of confirmation, as sub- 
mitted by him to Parhament, contained no such exception. 
As the latter was of course authoritative, Henry inherited 
from John of Gaunt a parliamentary title to the throne in 
case of failure, first of the lines of John's elder brothers, 
and, secondly, of heirs from his earlier marriages. Both 
of these contingencies had in great measvire occurred. 
The line of the Black Prince, Edward's eldest son, had 
ended with the unhappy Richard II. in 1399 ; William, 
the next brother, died early, and the House of York, the 
representatives of Lionel, the third brother, had been 
almost exterminated. As for John's earlier marriages, 
the Lancastrian line, beginning with Henry IV. (whose 
mother was Blanche of Lancaster), had also become 
extinct when the young Edward, son of Henry VL, was 
murdered by his uncles on the field of Tewkesbury. Thus, 
when Henry VII. succeeded to the throne, his only rivals 
in title were John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, the 
son of Richard III.'s sister Elizabeth (who had been 
declared by Richard heir to the throne) ; his brother the 
Earl of Suffolk; Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, 
the son of the Duke of Clarence put to death by Edward 
IV., his sister Margaret (afterwards Countess of Salis- 
bury), and Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV. 

Margaret Beaufort, Henry's mother, successively 
Countess of Richmond and of Derby, was, as will be 
shown in a subsequent chapter, one of the 
most remarkable women in English history. Margafet^ 
Her father was John Beaufort, the first Duke 
of Somerset. On his death in 1444, she became the ward 
of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and by him was 
married at the age of nine to his son, who afterwards suc- 
ceeded to the title. On her guardian's attainder, she was 



l6 The Early Ticdors. 1 397-1485 

transferred to the custody of Edmund Tudor, Earl of 
Richmond, and his brother Jasper Tudor, Earl of 
Pembroke, the former of whom became her husband in 
1456, her former marriage having been simply set aside. 
Both these noblemen had been treated as brothers by 
Henry VI., who bestowed great care on their education, 
and received from them loyal Slipport in the civil war, 
Jasper Tudor having been engaged in several of the chief 
battles and attainted with the King and Margaret of Anjou 
in 1461. Edmund Tudor died five years before this last 
event, a few months before his son's birth. The Countess 
of Richmond, thus widowed at the age of sixteen, lived 
for awhile in her brother-in-law's castle at Pembroke, and 
then, in 1459, rnarried her cousin Lord Henry Stafford, 
son of the Duke of Buckingham, and through him 
descended from Thomas of Woodstock, the sixth son ot 
Edward III. (the Duke of Gloucester who was so foully 
kidnapped and murdered by Richard II.) In 1482 she 
was again a widow; but soon married Lord Stanley, a 
widower with a numerous family. There are circum- 
stances connected with this last union which give the 
impression that she entered into it unwillingly, and merely 
in order to gain protection for her son, for whom alone she 
seemed really to live. For this purpose her husband 
was well chosen, as he was a strong Yorkist. Indeed, 
but for this marriage, her life would have been forfeited 
in 1483 for the part which she took in Buckingham's 
rebellion against Richard III. Soon after this she suc- 
ceeded in gaining over Lord Stanley to her son's party. 
In 147 1, after the battle of Tewkesbury, Jasper Tudor 

followed Margaret's advice by sending the 
invasion young Henry, his nephew, out of the country. 

Henry was now fifteen years old, and it was 
his mother's wish that he should take refuge with Louis XI. 



1485 Henry of RicJimotid. ij 

of France. This plan, however, failed, for he was wrecked 
on the Breton coast, and had to pursue the life of imprison- 
ment and surveillance which became so familiar to him. 
Indeed, he once said to Philippe de Commines ' that 
from the age of five years he had constantly been kept 
and concealed as a fugitive in prison.' Edward IV. and 
Richard III. made frequent attempts to recover him 
from Francis II., Duke of Bretagne ; Richard, indeed, 
promised to make him his son-in-law, if surrendered. 
Accordingly, by the contrivance of Landois, Francis's 
minister, during his master's illness, Henry was sent to 
St. Malo to be delivered up ; but, receiving a hint from 
his faithful supporter Bishop Morton that Landois was 
trying to get for his master in exchange for his surrender, 
the earldom of Richmond (which had formerly been 
held by the Dukes of Bretagne), he escaped, first into the 
woods, and then mto French territory at Angers. Here 
he was well received ; and the circumstances of the 
country soon made it highly expedient to support his claim 
to the English throne. For as Richard III. was sending 
archers to France in support of the French nobles in 
their attempt to raise a second 'War of the Public 
Good' against the young Charles VIII. (who had just 
succeeded his father on the French throne), the wise and 
politic Anne of Beaujeu, Duchess of Bourbon, who was 
Regent during her brother's minority, allowed Henry, in 
1485, to collect about 2,000 men — 'des plus mechants 
qu'on put trouver,' says Philippe de Commines — and 
also supplied a small sum of money to help the descent 
on England. Accordingly, on August 7 in that year 
Henry landed at Milford Haven, and immediately took 
the decided step of sending circulars calling for help 
against Richard as an usurper of his rights to the throne 
and a rebel. He then marched to Shrewsbury, where 
c 



1 8 The Early liidors . 1485 

he received the adhesion of Rhys ap Thomas and other 
Welsh chiefs. Ap Thomas had sworn that the invader 
should only enter England ' over his belly.' It is said to 
have been suggested by high authority that he might 
discharge himself from this vow by lying down on the 
ground and letting Henry step over him ; or by going 
under a bridge while Henry crossed it above him. In 
making, not for Worcester and the lower Severn, but for 
Shrewsbury, Henry had in view his stepfather Lord 
Stanley's Cheshire influence. At Stafford he heard that 
Stanley could not immediately join him without sacri- 
ficing the life of his son, Lord Strange, whom Richard had 
seized as a hostage; but, going almost alone in advance 
of his army to his camp at Atherstone, he received from 
him the most encouraging promises of support. At 
almost the same moment he was joined by Sir Walter 
Hungerford and Sir Thomas Bourchier, two of Richard's 
trusted officers, with a body of choice troops. From 
Atherstone he turned eastward to meet Richard, who 
was encamped between Hinckley and Market Bosworth. 
Even with the reinforcements just acquired he had scarcely 
5,000 men, barely half the number of Richard's forces ; 
so that his chance of victory was small, unless m.ore 
leaders deserted to him in the battle. 

Mr. Gairdner, in his excellent History of Richard III., 
has stated very clearly the causes which led to Henry's 
„ , , decisive success. Richard had, it appears, 

Battle of . ' Jr'F > 

Bosworth been misled by a prediction which he had 

heard about his rival's landing at Milford, re- 
ferring, as he imagined, to a small village of that name 
near Christchurch in Hampshire. Accordingly he had 
taken very few effective precautions to secure the fidelity 
of the Welsh leaders, or of Sir W. Stanley, who had 
the chief power in North Wales. As to Lord Stanley, 



1485 . Bosworth Field. 19 

Richard seems to have had the incapacity (not uncommon 
in tyrants) to reflect that those whom they injure are 
certain to remember the wrong when they themselves 
have forgotten it. His soldiers had all but murdered 
Lord Stanley on the day when he sent Lord Hastings to 
the block ; yet he trusted him in a manner to the last, 
making, however, a breastwork in rear of his own camp, 
for fear of being attacked by him. As for Sir W. Stanley, 
he had been declared a traitor even while commanding 
for Richard. It is most satisfactory to find that Richard's 
chance of ultimate success had departed from him as 
soon as the murder of his nephews in the Tower be- 
came known. Indeed, revolt after revolt thenceforward 
made it clear that, even though he might succeed in 
cajoling the mother and sister of the victims, he could 
not silence the groans and indignation with which his 
atrocious act was stigmatised in every street and market- 
place of England. The feeling against him was like that 
against King John for his treatment of Arthur, or against 
the Emperor Sigismund during his London visit in 
1416 for the murder of John Hus. Making a virtue of 
necessity, Richard acknowledged, as we are informed, 
his crime in his final address to his soldiers, but pleaded 
that he had 'washed it away by salt tears and strict 
penance.' He was however quite unable to excite the 
emotion which he desired. 

Advancing by the road from Hinckley to Stapleton 
and Market Bosworth, Richard drew out his forces on 
Sutton Heath. His enemy's position was difficult to 
force, as Redmore Plain, on which the Lancastrian 
troops were drawn out, was covered on the left and rear 
by a brook hard to cross, and on the right by Sutton 
Ambien Wood and by a morass — an arrangement which 
evidently made it necessary for Henry to conquer or die. 



20 The Early Tudors. 1485 

as retreat would have been most difficult. Yet, after all, 
Richmond made the common mistake of inexperienced 
soldiers, and desired his men to advance beyond the 
morass, thus running the risk of seeing them driven in 
and the whole position carried by the enemy's rush. 
Seeing the danger, the veteran Earl of Oxford first 
ordered the men not to move ten feet from the stand- 
ard; and then, when he had got them well in hand, 
seized the right moment for hurling them on the enemy, 
who seemed indisposed to advance and unlikely to make 
much resistance. At this moment Lord Stanley deserted 
Richard, and with him the Earl of Northumberland; 
while the Duke of Norfolk, Richard's firm supporter, was 
slain, and his son, the Earl of Surrey, taken prisoner. 
Few events in English history are better known than 
those which immediately followed — Richard's catching 
sight of his rival and charging him desperately; his 
Plantagenet prowess in the fight ; his refusal to fly ; the 
coming up of Sir W. Stanley ; Richard's shouts of 
'Treason,' 'Treason,' as he struck right and left; his fall 
with many wounds ; the finding by Reginald Bray in a 
thornbush of the crown which Richard had worn on his 
helmet, and the crowning of Henry with it by Lord 
Stanley. The battle may be considered typical of the 
period at which it occurred, combining as it did the use 
of such modern weapons as cannon (as proved by the 
balls from time to time dug up on the field) v/ith a 
mediaeval encounter, almost hand to hand, between the 
competitors for the throne. The victor followed the bad 
precedent of the Wars of the Roses by ordering some of 
his prisoners to be at once executed. As, however, his 
vengeance only lighted upon Catesby, the minister of 
Richard III., and two of his agents, he was considered 
to have been strangely merciful. The distribution of due 



1485 The Coi o}iation. 21 

honours and rewards was deferred, with some exceptions, 
till the meeting of Parliament in November. 

It was necessary at once to settle by what title Henry 
should claim the throne. The right of conquest was sug- 
gested, but at once put aside from an instinc- 

. . , , . , Henry s 

tive sense of the principle (explained by a title to the 
great authority of our own time in a cele- 
brated judgment) that, 'when a country is conquered, its 
inhabitants retain for the time their own laws, but are 
under the power of the Sovereign to alter these 
laws in any way which to the Sovereign in Coun- 
cil may seem proper.' Men were as clear on this 
point in 1485 as they were when the 'conquest' 
theory was broached in 1693 in favour of King William 
III., and when it excited, as Lord Macaulay tells us, 
a complete tempest of indignation against its unlucky 
propounder. There was another resemblance between 
the two periods ; namely, that Henry was as determined as 
William was in after days not to be a mere King Consort ; 
if he married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward 
IV., he would not owe his title to her. Accordingly on 
August 22 he assumed the crown in virtue of his Lancas- 
trian descent, without making the least mention of 
Elizabeth ; and in order to guard against Yorkist com- 
petition, he imprisoned in the Tower the Earl of War- 
Avick, the son of the Duke of Clarence whom Edward IV. 
had murdered. This unhappy young man had for a time 
been treated by Richard III. as his heir, but then put 
aside in favour of another nephew, John de la Pole, Earl 
of Lincoln, the son of Richard's sister Elizabeth. The 
chief part of the Warwick property was dealt with in a 
manner characteristic of Henry. He ordered its restora- 
tion to Anne, Countess of Warwick, the widow of the 
' Kingmaker,' but forced this aged lady at once to execute 



22 77/,? Eaf'ly Tudor s. 1485 

a ' feoffment ' granting to the King and his heirs all that 
had been her husband's and her own. This property in- 
cluded the islands of Guernsey, Jersey, and Sark, the 
city of Worcester, the town and castle of Warwick, and 
a vast number of manors and lordships in nineteen 
counties of England. Only a moderate pension and one 
manor in Warwickshire were left to her who, when young, 
had been the greatest lady in England. Nothing was re- 
served for her grand-daughter Margaret, who afterwards 
married Sir Richard Pole, and is well known as the 
Countess of Salisbury executed by Henry VIII. in 1541. 
On September 28, Henry made his entry into London ; 
'in a close chariot,' says Lord Bacon, ' in order to strike 

reverence into the people ' ; a theory of 
Coronation Henry's motives which has been curiously 

amplified by a German historian of England, 
who dilates on his strange conduct in thus withdrawing 
himself, popular and triumphant as he was, from the 
homage which awaited him in the streets, and yet resum- 
ing his military character in order to consecrate his stand- 
ards in St. Paul's. The truth is, however, that Bernard 
Andre, the historian of Henry, really spoke of him as en- 
tering London 'Isetanter'; and that Lord Bacon's 'close 
chariot,' as well as Pauli's longer paraphrase, is due to a 
misreading of this word into 'latenter.' Henry imme- 
diately announced his intention of marrying Elizabeth ; 
she was sent for from Sheriff's Hutton, and placed under 
her mother's protection till the Coronation was over and 
Henry's first Parliament had been held. He thus 
guarded, with almost superfluous care, against the chance 
of being thought to claim the crown through her. There 
was some fear that the prevalence in London of the 
' sweating sickness ' might delay the inauguration ; but 
as the force of the disease abated within two months, it 



1485 - T7ie Coronation. 23 

was possible to perform it on October 31 following. The 
marriage did not take place till January 18 in the next 
year. 

Henry was sparing of new creations on his accession ; 
but his stepfather, Lord Stanley, was made Earl of Derby, 
his uncle Jasper Tudor Duke of Bedford, and 

■' ^ Restoration 

Sir Edward Courtenay Earl of Devon. On of persons 
the other hand pecuniary grants were abun- 
dant in the first months of the reign. As a matter of 
course the chief sufferers in Henry's cause were reinstated 
in their property, often with large additions. Such were 
his mother, the Lady Margaret, now Countess of Derby ; 
Sir Thomas Stafford, the son and heir of the late Duke of 
Buckingham ; Catherine Duchess of Bedford, the same 
Duke's widow ; and Piers Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, 
who, like his brother Sir Edward, had been with Henry 
in exile. To John, Earl of Oxford, whose father had 
lost his life in the Lancastrian struggle, and who had dis- 
tinguished himself in 1473 by the seizure of St. Michael's 
Mount, was given the office of Admiral of England, 
Ireland, and Aquitaine. With this grant were joined 
many others ; among which we should not have expected 
to find Lord Oxford's appointment as keeper of the lions, 
lionesses, and leopards in the Tower, with a shilling a 
day for himself, and sixpence for the food of each 
animal. It may here be remarked, once for all, that in 
this reign money was about twelve times its present value. 
Another highly interesting restoration at this time 
was that of Henry, Lord Clifford — the ' Shepherd Lord ' 
whom Wordsworth has celebrated. His family had 
been attainted in 1461, and he himself concealed in a 
shepherd's hut to avoid the vengeance of the Yorkists 
for his father's murder of the child Earl of Rutland at 
the battle of Wakefield. In this condition he passed 



24 The Early Tudors. 1485 

twenty-four years, working at shepherds* tasks, and 
learning to know the stars by watching them from the 
Cumberland fells. Some manuscripts still remain in the 
possession of the Clifford family which prove his fond- 
ness for alchemy — a study which, though prohibited 
under pain of felony by a statute of Henry IV., had 
flourished in the very court of Henry VI., and was 
destined, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, long 
to retain its hold on English belief. He was also given 
to astrology, which was then held to be the great 
practical use of star-knowledge. Lord Clifford lived 
till the tenth year of Henry VIII. , and, in spite of 
the ' tranquil soul ' which the poet ascribes to him, 
distinguished himself highly at the battle of Flodden. 

At the same time an immense number of minor 
offices, such as the wardenships of royal parks and 
castles, were transferred from the supporters of Richard 
to those of Henry. Few comparatively were bestowed 
on Welshmen, though Sir Rhys ap Thomas, to whom 
Henry owed so much, was made Constable of Brecknock, 
Chamberlain of South Wales, and a Commissioner of 
Mines. Welshmen were, however, freely admitted to 
the small body of guards which Henry now formed, 
in imitation probably of Louis XL's Scottish Archers. 
Following the same King's example, Henry at once showed 
himself favourable to trade. Some London merchants 
claimed that by old custom they were to pay no tunnage 
between the day of a new king's accession and that on 
which his first Parliament met (this indulgence being 
considered as counterbalancing the extra expense which 
they incurred in guarding their property at such times), 
and their claim was allowed. Several Venetian traders 
who wished to come to England received a special safe- 



I 



1485 - The Coronation. 25 

conduct ; and some other Italians were relieved from 
penalties incurred under a statute of Richard III. 

The ' sweating sickness,' above alluded to, which broke 
out among us for the first time in 1485, was one of the most 
alarming of mediaeval epidemics ; and it re- 
curred so often in these reigns as to deserve pesdience 
a brief description here. According to Dr. 
Hecker of Berlin, who has collected all existing notices of 
it, it was a violent inflammatory fever, prostrating the bodily 
powers as with a blow, and suffusing the whole body 
with a fetid perspiration. The internal heat which the 
patient suffered was intolerable, yet every refrigerant 
was certain death, and the crisis was almost always over 
in twenty-four hours. Shortly after the royal entry on 
September 28 it began its ravages in the City, two Lord 
Mayors and many aldermen dying in a week. From 
thence it ranged through the greater part of England, 
stopping short, however, at the Scottish Border, and not 
spreading to Ireland, in spite of the constant maritime 
intercourse with that country. It mostly attacked pei'sons 
in the prime of health and strength, and not those who 
were weak from age, sex, or disease ; and this appears 
to disprove the opinion that it was caused by the presence 
of Henry's army in London, and was a consequence 
of the privations which they had suffered on shipboard 
and on their march. The disease gained fresh terror 
from the impotence of medicine to grapple with it. So 
complete was this, that the distinguished Linacre, who 
afterwards founded the College of Physicians, is not 
known to have written on the subject. Strange to say, 
this failure of the profession of medicine probably led 
to its quicker cessation ; for, as there was no scientific 
guidance, the people treated those attacked by the light 
of nature, making them go quietly to bed and stay there 



26 The Early Tudors. 1485 

till better, taking no food and only the mildest beverages. 
In subsequent years when the disease returned, and 
medical practice, as then understood, had risen to the 
occasion, the very opposite treatment to this was adopted 
in some countries. In the Netherlands, for instance, 
the patient was loaded with the hottest garments, and 
crushed, sometimes to actual suffocation, under a mass 
of feathei-beds kept down by the weight of several men 
lying at the top. There is no trace of such violent reme- 
dies being ever used in England ; on the present occasion 
the methods of common sense were blessed in their results, 
for the disease went on diminishing through the autumn, 
and was at length brought to an end most sudden and 
complete by the violent storm of New Year's Day, i486. 

It is always interesting to observe the moral conduct 
of a people during a time of terrible pestilence. In the 
„ .. , present instance we may remark that when 

English ^ ■, r 1 1 

feeling hardly one person recovered out of a hundred 

attacked, and when, moreover, the disease 
followed Englishmen abroad and spared foreigners resi- 
dent among us, it did not rouse either the national hatreds 
or the superstitious terrors which might have been ex- 
pected. We hear of nothing like the execution at Meissen 
in X 507 of ' bose Buben ' suspected of having poisoned 
the wells ; and the theological strife had not yet arisen 
which induced the citizens of Cologne in 15 17 to burn 
heretics in the hope of averting a fresh eruption of the 
same plague. Nor can it be said of England at this time 
(as Mr. Burton quotes of Scotland in 1569), that 'in time 
of plague selfishness ruled the day, every one being so 
detestable to others, and especially the poor to the rich, 
as if they were not equal with them touching their crea- 
tion ; but rather without soul or spirit, as beasts degener- 
ated from mankind.' No cases are recorded like those 



I485 Lambert Simnel. 27 

during the ' Black Death,' of near kinsmen forsaking one 
another; nor were there any such fierce outbreaks of 
fanaticism as those of the Flagellants, which soon after 
this maddened Germany and Hungary. Superstition of 
many kinds was indeed rife in England in 1485 ; but 
its types were at any rate somewhat gentler and more 
humane than those of other countries. 



CHAPTER HI. 



LAMBERT SIMNEL. THE BRETAGNE WAR. 
I486-1492. 

On November 7, 1485, Henry VII. held his first Parlia- 
ment, thus seeming to fulfil the general expectation that 
as a Lancastrian sovereign he would follow 
the example of Henry IV. and Henry V. in ofMsT'"' 
taking kindly to constitutional government. 
His House of Lords contained only twenty-seven lay 
peers — a fact which has been supposed to prove how many 
families had become extinct during the Wars of the Roses. 
In reality, however, only two had thus failed for want of 
heirs ; and the number of peers in this Parliament was so 
small because no summonses had been sent to twenty- 
five who were likely to be malcontent. Henry wished 
in the first place to have the succession settled upon 
his own heirs by whatever wife ; this was done, and, at 
his strongly expressed desire, confirmed by a Papal Bull. 
He also wanted the attainders of his supporters to be 
formally reversed, and not merely cancelled by his act 
in employing them, as he had done in several cases. 
He intended to issue a general pardon of his enemies 
with some exceptions ; yet was unwilling that Parlia- 



28 The Early Tudors. 1485-6 

ment should enact this, choosing rather to deal with indi- 
viduals, who might be made to pay dearly for it, and thus 
the better enable him to do for the present without any 
parhamentary revenue beyond the tunnage and pound- 
age which was granted to him for life. For the same 
purpose he declared invalid all alienations of property 
from the Crown made since 1454. He kept also a keen 
eye on the fines imposed upon foreign merchants for 
' non-employment ; ' that is, for attempting to dispose of 
their wares in England without buying a return cargo 
there. As if ' born to the manner ' of English royalty, he 
picked out for his ministers two of the ablest churchmen 
of the time, Morton, Bishop of Ely, his old and tried 
supporter, and Fox, Bishop of Exeter. The services of 
men like these on his Council would be invaluable, yet 
would cost him nothing, seeing that they might be paid 
by translation to richer bishoprics. After giving indemnity 
to all the King's partisans for any injury done to the 
opposite party, and enacting that Gascon wines should 
only be brought to England in English, Irish, or Welsh 
vessels, the Parliament was on the point of being pro- 
rogued when the members humbly petitioned Henry to be 
pleased to marry Elizabeth. With this request he com- 
plied, as we have already seen, yet her coronation was 
not for the present allowed. 

Considering himself now fairly established on the 
throne, Henry resolved on a progress to the North, the 
„ , „. great home of the Yorkist party, whence 

Rebellion . , . i. j • 

of the Richard III. had recently drawn his best and 

most faithful troops. On the way thither he 
kept his Easter joyously at Lincoln, but was rudely dis- 
abused of his confidence in his own fortune by an insur- 
rection raised by Lord Lovel, Sir Humphrey Stafford, and 
Sir Thomas Stafford, who had been in sanctuary at Col- 



i486 . Lambert SimneL 29 

Chester since Bosworth Field. The Stafifords were sons 
of the Humphrey Stafford slain by Cade in 1450 ; and, 
like Lord Lovel, had fought for Richard at Bosworth. 
They made for Worcester, apparently trusting for their 
safety to local connexions there. These, however, failed 
them entirely, and their forces dispersed on Henry's first 
proclamation of pardon. Lord Lovel fled to Lancashire 
and then to Flanders, and the Staffords took sanctuary at 
Culham, near Abingdon, but were removed from it for 
trial on the ground that the place had not sufficient privi- 
leges as a sanctuary to shelter traitors. The elder brother 
was then executed, the younger pardoned as having acted 
under his influence. 

This rebellion had little or no connexion with the 
feeling in favour of the House of York, which was still 
very strong in England, and attributable to 

• T 1 ^ 1 , Causes of 

two mam causes. In the first place, the Yorkist 
Lancastrians (including the present King) '^^"'s- 
were hated by the violent and unreasoning part of the 
community for having lost, under Henry VI., the English 
provinces in France, the wars occasioned by which had 
been such perennial sources of plunder to Englishmen 
serving there ; and the White Rose was therefore popular 
as more or less representing the idea of empire abroad. 
In the second place, traders and manufacturers held the 
same opinion on different grounds ; for, from the very 
accession of Edward IV., the head of the House of York, 
much had been done for them by the numerous com- 
mercial treaties which he made with foreign powers, and 
by his personal interest in trade ; especially had the 
greater strength of his government guaranteed our sea- 
coasts and trading vessels froin those attacks of pirates 
which remained for more than a century longer the 
invariable mark of a weak or careless rule in England. 



30 The Early Tudors. i486 

We can therefore readily understand the strength of 
Yorkist feeling in London and in the North, seeing that 
so large a part of English trade and English manu- 
factures belonged to these districts. In Ireland the 
same sentiment existed, but appears to have sprung 
chiefly and characteristically from a remembi'ance of the 
gentle sway of Richard, Duke of York, as Lord-Deputy 
there in 1459 '» when, after the defeat of his party at Blore 
Heath, he crossed the Channel, seized the government of 
Ireland in defiance of Ormond and the Lancastrians, and 
proceeded to hold a Parliament there which claimed to 
be independent of the English Parliament and courts of 
law. George Duke of Clarence had also been loved in 
Ireland for his father's sake, and had distinguished him- 
self by his courteous behaviour to the people between 
the years 1461 and 1470, and afterwards from 1472 till 
his death. 

To arouse and stimulate all these feelings of opposition 
to Henry's government was the life-long purpose of Mar- 
garet of York, the sister of Edward IV., who 
Battle of had been second wife to Charles the Bold, 

'° ^' Duke of Burgundy. After the death of her 

husband in his war with the Swiss (1477), this princess 
had seen the French part of his dominions absorbed by 
Louis XL, and the Flemish provinces passing by the mar- 
riage of Mary her stepdaughter into the hands of Maxi- 
milian of Austria, the young and chivalrous son of Fred- 
erick III., Emperor of Germany; she herself, however, 
retained so much independence in the districts which had 
been assigned to her as a dowry on her marriage, that it 
was vain to appeal to the Emperor when she did acts hostile 
to England. The marriage of her niece with Henry had 
by no means conciliated her ; she rather hated Elizabeth 
as a deserter from the White Rose. Herill-feelinEr found 



1486-7 . Lambert Simncl. 31 

its opportunity in i486, when Lambert Simnel was 
brought forward as a pretender to the Enghsh Crown. 
The broad facts of the imposture were that this youth 
was represented as being really the Earl of Warwick 
whom Henry had under lock and key in the Tower. 
When, therefore, we find that his cause was supported 
by the Earl of Lincoln, Richard III.'s own nephew, who 
had once been heir-presumptive to the Crown, it seems 
plain that Lincoln's hope must have been to get rid of 
Henry by means of this deception, and then quietly to 
put the puppet aside and stand up for his own right ; 
adopting, in fact, the plan which Buckingham would pro- 
bably have pursued towards Henry himself if the rebellion 
of 1483 had been successful. As so many people knew 
the true Lord Warwick by sight, and as Henry took care 
that all London should see him on the way to and from 
St. Paul's, it was thought best that Simnel should make 
his first appearance in Ireland. There he found men's 
minds fully prepared for a Yorkist insurrection. Accord- 
ingly his cause was taken up by Lord Kildare, who was 
then ruling Ireland as deputy for the Duke of Bedford, 
and he was actually crowned at Dublin (May 24, 1487) 
as Edward VI. without a sword being drawn. At this 
point Margaret struck in to aid him, showing herself 
as courageous as her husband, but with a feminine craft 
which was all her own. She helped a skilful commander 
named Martin Schwartz to equip nineteen vessels carry- 
ing about 2,000 veteran soldiers ; and Simnel sailed for 
England with these and with some Irish troops com- 
manded by Lord Kildare, besides a few Englishmen 
under Lord Lincoln. Landing at Fouldrey in Lancashire, 
he made first for York, striving hard as he went to keep 
his men orderly and humane, so that the impression of 
his being really the rightful King might strengthen. By this 



32 The Ej.7iy Tudors. 1487 

time, however, Henry, after making a pilgrimage to Wal- 
singham, had fixed his headquarters at Nottingham, as 
Richard III. had done just before Bosworth ; both Kings 
considering this place well situated for commanding the 
various roads from the North to London. He had also 
much to encourage him; for, popular though the Yorkist 
cause might be, most Englishmen disliked the thought of 
having a king imposed upon them by a mob of Irishmen 
and Flemings. Accordingly Lord Lincoln had to engage 
at Stoke, near Newark (June 16), with little more than 
the force which he brought from Ireland. The battle 
was obstinate, there being little thought of giving 
quarter to foreigners or Irish. Lord Lincoln fell with 
Martin Schwartz and Lord Lovel; unless, indeed, the 
story is true that Lovel was concealed for several years 
in a strong-room at Minster Lovel, in Oxfordshire, and at 
last died there from the negligence of a servant who failed 
to provide him with food. The unhappy Irish, armed as 
they were with nothing better than darts and knives, were 
of course cut in pieces. Content with the death of his 
chief enemies in battle, Henry pardoned the nobles who 
had assisted in the Dublin coronation, on their pleading 
that they had been misled, not only by the very governor 
whom the King had placed over them, but by the Arch- 
bishop of Dublin and the chief part of the clergy. He 
even spared Simnel himself, making him, first a turnspit 
in his kitchen, and then, by way of promotion, a falconer. 
In the course of the next year he, with not a little quiet 
humour, exhibited the pretender dressed in his livery to 
the Irish nobles who were visiting London ; and enjoyed 
immeasurably the uncourtly execrations into which they 
burst at the sight. 

After his victory Henry thought it prudent to con- 
ciliate Yorkist feeling by allowing the coronation of 



1487 Lambert Simncl. 33 

Queen Elizabeth; this took place November 25, 1487. 
He could afford to comply thus far, as he had just made 
a Northern progress of a very different character from 
the one which he had designed in the preced- 

TT. , . , , , ■ , Martial law. 

ing year. His object now had been to punish 
all who had adhered to the rebellion; and when we hear 
that for this purpose he proclaimed martial law, it is 
easy to judge of the terror which his presence must havj 
caused, in spite of his generally preferring fines to blood- 
shed. With regard to such proclamations, it is satis- 
factory to learn from the highest authority that, the 
rebellion being at an end, they were quite illegal ; indeed 
an Act of Indemnity was afterwards required to protect 
from penalties those who had used force under tliem. 
Strangely enough, one of those on whom the King's 
hand fell heavily was his wife's mother, who on the 
first report of Simnel's rebellion was imprisoned for 
the rest of her life in a nunnery at Bermondsey, with 
little allowance for her support. This was done by 
authority of the King in Council ; the reason alleged, 
namely that she' had placed her daughters in King 
Richard's hands instead of remaining with them in 
sanctuary, was so plainly frivolous that the object in 
making it must have been to suggest that there was much 
more behind. Lord Bacon conjectures that she may 
have borne a part in teaching Simnel how to make 
people think him a prince, from a notion that Henry 
was unkind to her daughter, and a consequent wish that 
he might be slain or deposed. Yet he appears to have 
been, on the whole, an affectionate husband; although 
we are told some years later that Margaret, Henry's 
mother, was somewhat tyrannical to her daughter-in-law. 
On this view, it must be acknowledged that the situation 
was strained ; for the Lady Margaret, Lancastrian to 



34 The Early Tudor s. 1487 

the backbone, was allowed by Henry to regulate on the 
most critical occasions all the details of Elizabeth's 
household, to the utter exclusion of her Yorkist mother, 
who must surely have been more or less than a woman 
and a mother-in-law if she could have calmly endured 
such exclusion. Perhaps we need go no further to 
account for her ruin. 

Henry's second Parliament was now held (November 
9, 1487). It established for the first time the Court of 

Star Chamber, for reasons and in a manner 
Brete'^n"! which will be stated in another chapter, where 

also its statute against carrying off women 
will be described. The main subject which it had to deal 
with was the critical state of affairs in Bretagne. Here 
Duke Francis, at whose court Henry had long lived, 
was now in extreme old age, and, as he had no son, 
the question was what should become of his province 
when he died. The determined resolution of Anne 
of Beaujeu to bring about the union of Bretagne to 
France by a marriage between Charles VIII. and its 
heiress Anne was creditable to her patriotism ; her 
personal interest was all the other way, as Ferdinand 
and Isabella had in i486 promised that, if she arranged a 
marriage between their daughter and Charles VIII., they 
would support her in claiming a perpetual regency in 
France, their hope being that she would maintain between 
the two countries the peace which was certain to come to 
an end if Charles assumed the full powers of the French 
Crown. England was still more strongly against the 
union between France and Bretagne ; and not unnaturally 
so, considering the great danger to our navigation from 
the long line of coast which would thus come into French 
hands, instead of being hostile, as it generally had been 
while under the separate governments. Doubtless our 



1487 The Bretagne War. 35 

mariners knew well the fact, remarked in our own time 
by the Duke of Wellington, how clearly ships going along 
our coast may be detected at a great distance by the 
light on their sails from the southward sun, while French 
ships on the other side escape notice and pursuit from 
their sails being in shade. Troubles between Bretagne 
and France began even in Francis's life-time ; for the 
Duke received and befriended the Duke of Orleans (after- 
wards Louis XII.), who, after the fashion of heirs-pre- 
sumptive, had raised against the Regent's power the war 
of the ' Public Good ' already alluded to. Accordingly 
in the preceding September an embassy had been sent to 
England by the French Government requesting Henry 
to remember his old obligations to France, and either to 
join in the attack on Bretagne, or at least to remain 
neutral in the war. The ambassadors reached him at 
Leicester, and were almost immediately asked whether 
it was true that Charles VIII. was planning a marriage 
with Anne. They professed to be scandalised at the 
very suggestion — it was well known, they said, that 
their master was affianced to Margaret, the daughter of 
Maximilian King of the Romans ; indeed, this very 
young lady had for some time been residing in Paris, 
and receiving a French education. Besides this they 
declared that Charles was arranging an expedition into 
Italy ; his views, therefore, were in a direction quite 
opposite to that of Bretagne. The ambassadors might 
have added that Maximilian himself was the only person 
whom Anne would at the time hear of as a husband — as 
indeed she afterwards married him by proxy. Henry 
replied by a counter-embassy, offering his mediation 
for the re-establishment of peace between Bretagne and 
France. Charles VIII. declared that such an arrange- 
ment was just what he most ardently desired ; but 



36 The Early Tudors. 1487 

would it not be well, he asked, that Urswick, the English 
ambassador, should go to Rennes on his way home, 
and come to an equally clear understanding with the 
Breton Government ? This could not well be refused, 
and the result was just what Charles had foreseen : the 
answer to Urswick was really given, not by Francis II., 
but by the Duke of Orleans, whose interest was entirely 
against peace. Louis would hear of no terms of 
accommodation ; he also urged most strongly that the 
union of France and Burgundy must be contrary to 
English interests. On this Charles asked Henry to 
continue his mediation till peace was brought about, but 
at the same time announced his own intention of at once 
going on with the warlike operations. He therefore 
invaded Bretagne and besieged Nantes (June 1487) ; 
and at this time a few English volunteers under Lord 
Woodvile went over to help the Bretons — a proceeding 
at which Henry professed himself very indignant. 

This was the state of things on which the Parliament 
of November 1487 had to decide. They were asked 

pointblank by Archbishop Morton whether or 
poUcy^here ^° ^^^y would advise the King to ally himself 

with Bretagne against France. Morton told 
them that an honourable foreign war would be better for 
Henry than the domestic tumults which had given so 
much trouble of late. The position of England as to the 
Continent had, he remarked, been much altered for the 
worse of late by the absorption of Burgundy into the 
dominions of France and Austria : were they to allow 
Bretagne, their other trusty confederate, to be constantly 
joined with France against them ? Besides, such a 
precedent of the greater being allowed to swallow up 
the less would be a fatal one for small countries like 
Scotland, Portugal, and many of the States of Germany, 



A 



1488 The Brctagne War. 37 

These arguments seemed conclusive to the members, 
who would naturally also fear the loss of Breton 
trade (as we then obtained from thence our chief supplies 
of linen and canvas) ; and a subsidy for the war was 
unanimously voted. Henry would not, howeyer, begin 
hostilities without another embassy ; and before this came 
to an end, the battle of St. Aubin had been fought, 
the Duke of Orleans taken prisoner, and Lord Woodvile 
slain with most of his men (July 28, 1488). Somewhat 
confused at this effect of his long delay, Henry at once 
sent over Lord Brook, one of his companions in exile, 
with 8,000 men. Yet this commander could not or would 
not bring the French to battle ; and after the death of 
Francis II., which occurred September 9, the English, 
finding that no one claimed them as allies, simply re- 
turned to England, five months after their departure for 
France. This of course left matters for the present in 
the hands of the French Government ; which showed, it 
must be admitted, considerable tact in the management 
of difficult circumstances, beginning by claiming only 
Charles's right as suzerain to break the marriage of Anne 
with Maximilian, as being contrary to the interests of 
France. This was done ; and the unlucky King of the 
Romans had both to lose his wife and to take back the 
little daughter whom he had hoped to make Queen of 
France. He had, however, gained more than one point 
by these transactions. For though Bretagne was finally 
lost to him, and though the Duchess Anne became the 
wife of Charles VIII. (December I49i),yet the lady never 
forgot that she had once been Queen of the Romans, and 
was perpetually plotting in favour of his family ; indeed, 
on one occasion she attempted to marry her daughter to 
Charles of Spain, Maximilian's grandson, and thus, in 
defiance of the Salique law, to make France part of his 



38 The Early Tudors. 1489 

overgrown dominions. Besides this the Enghsh, before 
the hope of MaximiUan's marrying Anne was over, had 
supported him vigorously against his own rebellious sub- 
jects at Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, and Sluys. The popular 
jDarty in the cities had invited the French to their aid ; 
and, under pretence that the safety of the garrison of 
Calais was threatened by their revolt, Henry sent about 
2,000 men, under Lords Morley and Daubeny, who in- 
flicted a heavy blow upon the French besiegers of Nieuport. 
Thus both in Bretagne and on the north-eastern frontier 
of France there had been fighting between the English 
and French, while at the same time Henry and Charles 
strongly maintained that the peace between the countries 
was unbroken. 

The subsidy for the war granted by Henry's third 
Parliament in 1489 was not levied without great difficulty 
,, , in the North of England. It was opposed 

Northern ^ ^^ 

and Scottish most strenuously in Yorkshire and the Bishop- 
ric of Durham ; the people maintaining that 
the miseries which they had been suffering made such pay- 
ments impossible. In fact, they seem to have been just 
able to tolerate a Lancastrian sovereign if he, for his 
part, never asked them for money. The King ordered 
the Duke of Northumberland to enforce the collection ; 
but on the first attempt he was murdered by the recusants. 
On this the Earl of Surrey, who had been lately released 
from the Tower, where he had been prisoner since the 
beginning of the reign, was ordered to take the command 
against them, Henry himself leading up a reserve force 
in case of disaster. However, the rebels were put down 
before it arrived ; their chief leader. Sir John Egremond, 
fled to the Duchess of Burgundy, while the plebeian rioters 
were hanged in considerable numbers. At about the 
same time with these events Henry heard of the death of 



1492 The Bretagne War. 39 

James III. of Scotland, whose friendship he had re- 
peatedly tried to win, obtaining from him in 1487 a truce 
for seven years, renewable for similar periods. James 
died miserably in consequence of an accident which threw 
him from his horse and left him stunned and defenceless 
(1488) to be murdered by one of the rebels who had just 
defeated his troops at Sauchie. 

There is something really amusing about Henry's 
pomp of preparation in 1492 for a war with France to 
avenge the absorption of Bretagne which he 
had failed in hindering. The warlike spirit with^'France. 
of England had been strongly stimulated by Ej^*^? °^ 
the news of Ferdinand and Isabella's capture 
of Granada from the Moors, which arrived in the spring 
of that year, the city having surrendered on the 2nd of 
January. This, indeed, was an event of which it would 
be hard to exaggerate the importance. For the -Moham- 
medan power had till then appeared irresistible ; and the 
fall of Constantinople in 1453 had invested the Sultans 
with a thousand claims, as representing the empire of Con- 
stantine, which might at any moment be pressed in the 
most alarming manner. In i486, Mohammed II. had 
made his famous descent upon Otranto ; intending to use 
this as a base of operations, first against Rome and Italy, 
then against the other States of Europe — an enterprise 
which was hindered by nothing but his death in the fol- 
lowing year, and the succession of the unwarlike Bajazet. 
The tide had now been turned by Spanish valour : Islam 
had lost the chief outwork of its power, and the victory 
had added to the territories of Castile and Aragon a 
country of brilliant fertility and resource, the possession of 
which had an effect in consolidating the Spanish monarchy 
superior even to that produced in France by the annexa- 
tion of Burgundy. England had been represented at the 



40 The Early Tudors. 1492 

siege of Granada only by one gallant volunteer, Lord Scales, 
who had greatly distinguished himself in the early part 
of the war. Nevertheless the event was celebrated by a 
service of triumph held in St. Paul's : and Archbishop 
Morton, who had now at Henry's express request been 
made a Cardinal, congratulated the vast assembly on the 
close of the 700 years of war with the unbelievers in Spain, 
and the certainty that numberless souls would now be 
gained to the Kingdom of Christ. Stirred to the emu- 
lation of such prowess, the Parliament allowed Henry (a 
former Act notwithstanding) to raise a benevolence for 
the French war ; it was on this occasion that Cardinal 
Morton devised his celebrated ' Fork,' ordering his com- 
missioners to press hard men who spent much, as this 
proved them to be rich, and also men who spent little, as 
it was plain that they must be saving largely. Tourna- 
ments and military exercises were held everywhere to 
'stir the blood' of the people; and a striking success in 
Flanders excited still more enthusiasm. The Duke of 
Saxony, pretending a wish to arbitrate between his 
ally Maximilian and his rebellious subjects at Bruges, 
had been admitted into that city with a small force. 
Instead, however, of staying there and communicating 
with the magistrates, he passed out unchecked by the 
gate leading to Damni and Sluys, and seizing the former 
of these towns cut off Bruges from the sea, access 
to which was all important for its trade. On this Henry 
allowed his troops to help Maximilian by besieging 
Sluys, which commanded the embouchure of the canal 
leading to Bruges. This he was the more inclined to do 
as Ravestein, the leader of the insurgents, had made 
Sluys the headquarters of a vigorous system of piracy. 
He therefore sent Sir E. Poynings with a considerable 
force, which assailed the castles while the Duke of Saxony 



1492 The Bretagfie War. 41 

besieged the town. After much obstinate fighting the place 
surrendered, and the rebeUion against Maximihan was 
practically at an end, very mainly through English help. 
This, however, did not overcome Henry's reluctance to 
plunge farther into the war. True he had assembled a 
force not less than 26,000 strong ; but the question of 
ways and means constantly weighed on his mind. Maxi- 
milian was above all things impecunious ; his father, the 
old Emperor Frederic III. — ' I'homme le plus chiche qui 
fut jamais,' as Philippe de Commines calls him — could not 
be reckoned on for much ; subsidies were hard to wring 
from the people at home, and even if collected, their 
value was trifling compared with the vast expense of such 
a war, in which the commonest archer would be paid 
at least sixpence a day (a sum, as we have seen, equal 
to six shillings of our money). Tidings also came that 
Ferdinand of Aragon had just made a treaty with France 
on most advantageous terms, receiving back Roussillon 
and Perpignan, which his father had pledged to France 
for 300,000 crowns. Accordingly, though Henry sailed for 
Calais (October 6), leaving orders for the army to rendez- 
vous there, and even began the siege of Boulogne (as an 
instalment of the sovereignty which he claimed over all 
France), yet he was not insensible to the advantage of 
negotiating, and allowed a peace to be concluded at 
Etaples (November 3), receiving under the name of ex- 
penses a sum of 127,000/., besides a pension or tribute of 
6,000/. a year to make good what he had spent in Bretagne. 
Thus the war ended, not heroically we must admit ; yet 
how much better would it have been for England if 
Henry's successor had been more like him in hating use- 
less conquests. The present King's motives were doubt- 
less mixed enough ; what his enemies called avarice had 
much to do with his conduct, and he also feared war in 



42 The Early Tudors. 1492 

general, as tending to raise up competitors for a throne 
in some sense gained by conquest. Avarice, however, is 
hardly a fault when it takes the form of sparing the people 
taxes ; and when we hear of so many sovereigns plunging 
into battle in order that their title may not be canvassed, 
we ought surely to have a good word for the King who 
thought the permanence of his reign best secured by 
peace. Thus much at least must be admitted, that inspi- 
ration itself would hardly have guided Henry better at 
this juncture than did his own mental habits and ten- 
dencies. For a danger was soon to burst upon him which 
required his very fullest attention ; well for him that it 
did not find him hampered by a dangerous foreign con- 
flict in which success was unlikely, and almost sure to be 
useless even if attained. 



CHAPTER IV. 



WARBECK. BLACKHEATH FIELD, 
I 492- I 496. 

As early as 1491, a youth named Warbeck had gone to 
Ireland in the service of a Breton merchant, Pregent 
Meno. He was strikingly handsome and well- 
widely dressed, and attracted considerable attention 
suppor e . ^^ j^j^ arrival at Cork. Gradually a report 
was spread that he was really a Plantagenet ; what pre- 
cise member of that illustrious family was now among 
them was a point on which authorities disagreed. He was 
first made out to be the Earl of Warwick, then a bastard 
of Richard III.; but, at last, all Ireland was convinced 
that he was no other than the Duke of York, one of the 



1493 - Warbeck. 43 

two youthful prisoners murdered in the Tower. Thus 
encouraged, Warbeck wrote letters to the Earls of Des- 
mond and Kildare to enlist them in his cause. He made 
little progress for a time in gaining powerful adherents, 
and had, indeed, as yet scarcely been heard of in Eng- 
land; still, his Irish sojourn had given him a good oppor- 
tunity for studying the part which he was to play. When 
the war with France was declared in 1492, the French 
Government thought it worth while to invite him to 
Paris; there he was received as a royal prince, and 
attended by a guard of honour. On the conclusion of 
the Peace of Etaples he was not surrendered to Henry, 
but simply ordered to leave France ; upon which Marga- 
ret of Burgundy received him with enthusiasm as her 
nephew, and may also have done something in the way 
of prompting him for his part, though the stories of her 
having been his chief instructress are inconsistent with 
the comparative lateness of his visit to her. It is almost 
strange that Henry allowed the affair to go on thus long 
with so little notice. He may have thought even Mar- 
garet's genius hardly equal to such a tour de force as the 
launching of another counterfeit prince, only six years 
after her first failure in this line ; and certainly did not 
know that Warbeck had many partisans in England, and 
had promised Margaret that, in the event of success, her 
long unsettled dowry should be paid, and also her ex- 
penses for him and for the earlier Yorkist rebellions. 
Accordingly he considered it enough for the present 60 
send Sir Edward Poynings and Dr. Warham on an 
embassy to Flanders (July 1493) and remonstrate against 
the countenance given to the pretender, taking at the 
same time some steps towards having a force ready in 
case of need. The ambassadors received only an evasive 
answer from the Archduke Philip's Council. ' It was im- 



44 The Early Tudor s. 1493 

possible,' they said, 'to interfere with the Duchess of 
Burgundy's actions within the districts which belonged to 
her.' The only method now at Henry's disposal, short 
of actual war, was a prohibition of trade between England 
and Flanders ; so all Flemings were banished from Eng- 
land, and the mart for English cloth transferred from 
Antwerp to Calais. The misfortune was that this prohibi- 
tion created distress in England as well as in Flanders, 
besides exciting a furious jealousy in London against the 
German merchants there, who were less affected by it. 
This feeling reached such a pitch that the Steelyard, which 
was the London centre of their trade, narrowly escaped 
utter destruction. 

Meanwhile Henry, as a worthy pupil of Louis XL, was 
using many artful means for tracking out the conspiracy 
against him. He directed various spies to pretend loyalty 
to Warbeck and his party, and thus to ascertain on whose 
help they counted in England. At the same time they 
were to take every opportunity of detaching Englishmen 
abroad from the rebellion. It is said that he took par- 
ticular care to have these spies cursed at St. Paul's, as 
if they were really his enemies. This, however, would 
happen in the natural course of things, if he kept secret 
their real intentions. The results of this policy soon 
appeared in the arrest of Lord Fitzwalter and some other 
men of rank, several of whom were beheaded. But the 
most startling revelation still remained ; it was found that 
Sir W. Stanley, who had deserted to Henry at Bosworth 
Field, had now joined the conspiracy against him. Little 
is known about the degree of Sir William's guilt. The 
indictment against him only specified his having said ir 
conversation with the informer Clifford, that ' if he were 
sure that the young man was King Edward's son, ha 
would not bear arms against him.' The judges held that 



1495 Warbeck. 45 

treason could not escape from being sheltered under 
such a condition ; and Stanley was accordingly executed 
(February 16, 1495). It appears also that he had deeply 
offended Henry by applying for the Earldom of Chester, 
which was then, as it still is, an appanage of the Crown 
and annexed to the title of Prince of Wales. 

Meantime Maximilian and his young son Philip were 
in rapture at the splendid chances which were now pre- 
senting themselves. Warbeck appears to have given 
them the additional promise, either to abdicate in favour 
of Philip, or to hold the kingdom in subordination to 
him; it seemed quite probable that Maximilian would 
soon be able to hurl all the forces of England at the 
King of France whom he hated so entirely. Henry VII. 
therefore became suddenly aware that England was to 
be at once invaded, and that Warbeck was held to be 
really the Duke of York, not only by those who had been 
maintaining him for two years, but by the Pope, by 
James IV. of Scotland, by Charles VIll. of France, 
by the Duke of Savoy, by the King of Denmark, and 
perhaps also by Ferdinand and Isabella. To a man 
habitually prudent and foreseeing there is something 
unbearable in the thought of having allowed danger 
to accumulate by sheer neglect; and Henry suffered this 
misery to such an extent that he became in a few days 
quite like an old man. 

At the beginning of July 1495 Warbeck's fleet, or rather 
Maximilian's, was off the coast of Kent. Some of the 
troops on board disembarked near Deal, and „, , , . 

Warbeck in 

were at once set upon by the country people. ireU^nd and 
No attempt was made to rescue the prisoners, 
and the expedition passed on ; its leaders little thinking 
that the acute Ferdinand would at once divine that one 
who acted so pusillanimously could not be a genuine 



46 The Early Tudor s. 1496 

Plantagenet. Warbeck made for Ireland and began the 
siege of Waterford, which had been always favoured as 
the original landing-place of Henry II., and had shown 
its loyalty eight years before by holding out against 
Simnel. Its inhabitants now resisted the attack with such 
spirit for eleven days that the pretender found it necessary 
to raise the siege ; and so little was to be accomplished 
in Ireland that he now resolved to try his fortune with 
James IV., who had promised him help even before 
his departure for Flanders. Accordingly he landed in 
Scotland, was received with considerable ceremony by 
James at Stirling (November 26), and an invasion of 
England was planned, for which Scotland was to be 
compensated by 33,000/. and the cession of Berwick. 
Henry, now thoroughly awakened to his difficulties, was 
attempting the same arts which had prospered in Flanders. 
He was in. constant correspondence with John Ramsay 
Lord Bothwell, who had promised, if possible, to kid- 
nap the ' feigned boy ' and despatch him to England, 
and also to intimidate his supporters. Bothwell traitor- 
ously pressed upon Henry that war with Scotland was 
always dear to Englishmen ; that James's government 
was most unpopular ; that it would be easy to send a 
fleet and destroy all the shipping of the country ; and 
that Edinburgh Castle itself was only half armed. How- 
ever, before Henry was prepared for such enterprises, 
the Scottish raid into England took place (September 17), 
and was carried out with a cruelty which shocked 
Warbeck himself; indeed he expressed his grief at it in 
a way which his allies considered as ' unprincely ' as his 
cowardice at Deal had been. As the invaders numbered 
only 1 ,400, nothing was really effected ; the only reliable 
hope had been that Warbeck would find support beyond 
the Border, none of which appeared during the four days 



1497 - Blackheath Field. 47 

which the invaders spent in England. By this time both 
Charles VIII. and Ferdinand had bethought themselves 
how important it was to compete for Henry's friendship ; 
and each was declaring that he alone could supply un- 
doubted evidence of Warbeck's real birth. Henry, not ill 
pleased at finding his alliance thus valued, and his dan- 
ger from Warbeck getting less every day, nevertheless 
used the rebellion as an excuse for remaining neutral in 
the Franco-Austrian quarrel; 'how,' he asked Ferdinand 
and Maximilian, ' could he possibly declare against 
France while such a home-danger was close upon him ? ' 
Whether any of the new evidence was now communicated 
to James is uncertain ; at any rate, Warbeck was ordered 
to leave Scotland and advised to land somewhere on the 
English coast in the hope of gaining support there. 
That the recommendation was serious we may judge 
from the fact that when he embarked at Ayr (July 1497), 
it was in company with the celebrated Scottish mariners 
Andrew and Robert Barton, of whom we shall hear 
more in the next reign. Instead, however, of at once 
carrying out James's plan, he went for the third and last 
time to Ireland ; but, finding that the Deputy, Lord 
Kildare, would now oppose him vigorously, he thought 
it better to try his fortune in Cornwall, where a rebellion 
had been repressed only three months before, and might 
perhaps be renewed by his presence. 

This Cornish dissatisfaction had originally sprung 
out of the old grievance of subsidies. That a trifling 
Scottish invasion should be held to justify 
such exactions all over England appeared RebeTiion. 
intolerable to a sturdy race of miners who Blackheath 

•' . Field. 

would have thought little of resisting a few 
hundred foreigners, if any such had landed in their coun- 
ties. Being informed by Thomas Flammock, a Bodmin 



48 TJic Eciily Tudors. 1497 

attorney, tliat taxes were illegal for such a purpose, they 
actually resolved to march to London in arms in order to 
petition against the impost, and to call for the punishment of 
those who advised it — that is, of Cardinal Morton and Sir 
Reginald Bray. In Devonshire their conduct was peace- 
ful ; but on entering Somersetshire near Taunton, they 
murdered a Commissioner for the subsidy, and forced 
Lord Audley to be their general. Under his command 
they marched by way of Salisbury and Winchester into 
Kent, where they hoped to find a population like-minded 
with themselves, doubtless from the memories of Cade's 
rebellion. In this they had no success, the Kentish men 
being proud rather of their recent resistance to Warbeck 
than of any achievements of their fathers. Henry also, 
fortunately for himself, had forces in hand which had 
been prepared for the Scottish war ; these were imme- 
diately ordered to advance towards Blackheath, where the 
rebels were now encamped, while at the same time bodies 
of horse were sent to their rear to prevent their straggling 
in that direction. Officers were also detached to the city 
of London to organise resistance and check the panic 
which seemed impending there. Confidence having 
been thus restored, the commanders spread a report that 
they intended to attack the. rebels on Monday, June 24 ; 
and, having thus thrown them off their guard, they 
ordered their outposts at the bridge over the Ravensbourne 
at Deptford to be driven in on the Saturday afternoon. 
This was done by Lord Daubeny ; and as the Cornish- 
men had arranged no supports in case of repulse, he 
had no difficulty in making his way up Blackheath 
Hill, and charging the main body on the plain above. 
His victory was soon complete, 2,000 rebels being 
slain and the other 14,000 completely hemmed in by 
the troops in their rear. It is remarkable that although 



1497 Warbeck. 49 

the good archery of Cornwall had cost Henry the lives 
of 300 men slain on the field, he yet contented himself 
with inflicting capital punishment on Lord Audley, Flam- 
mock, and a third leader, the Bodmin blacksmith Michael 
Joseph. 

Escaping with difficulty from some Waterford pursuers 
who were overhauling his vessels, Warbeck landed at 
Whitsand Bay ; and the Cornishmen, no whit 
daunted by the results of their excursion to Devonshire. 
the metropolis, joined him in such numbers 
that he was able, after a fashion, to besiege Exeter. Being 
driven from thence by the Earl of Devonshire, he led 
about 7,000 men as far as Taunton ; then his heart failed 
him so miserably that he deserted his wretched followers 
and made for the sanctuary of Beaulieu in the New 
Forest. Being taken to Exeter, where Henry then was, 
he made a full confession of his imposture, the substance 
of which has been lately confirmed by the discovery of a 
letter from him to his mother, written at about the same 
time, and with family details closely corresponding to 
those in the confession. Strange to say, his life too was 
spared, even after he had made one attempt at escape ; 
but, being afterwards imprisoned in the Tower, he was 
allowed to communicate with the captive Earl of Warwick. 
The two plotted a new evasion, and were then both 
executed : ' the winding-ivy of a Plantagenet,' as Lord 
Bacon says, ' thus killing the true tree itself.' Mr. 
Gairdner, from an appendix to whose work on Richard 
III. the newer details here given upon Warbeck have been 
taken, is inclined to believe that the pretender was spared 
only that he might entrap Lord Warwick. If Henry 
really contrived this, he must have been a graduate in 
treachery worthy to rank beside Louis XI. and Richard 
III. Yet it is hard to see why Warwick could not have 

E 



50 The Early Tudors. 1496 

been destroyed by simpler means ; and we should in 
justice remember that Henry had let Simnel live without 
any such motive. Indeed, with all his faults, blood- 
thirstiness seems to have been foreign to his character, at 
any rate when he felt himself safe without capital punish- 
ments. There was a quaint kindliness, too, which sounds 
sincere, in his reply to his Council's condolence on his 
being so troubled with impostors. 'It is,' he said, 'the 
vexation of God himself to be vexed with idols ; therefore, 
let not this trouble any of my friends. For myself, I 
have always despised them ; and am only grieved that 
they have put my people to such great trouble and 
misery.' 

Even before these events came to an end the prohi- 
bition had been removed against commerce with Flanders. 
The intermediate difficulties of the country 
tercursus had been much lightened by the patriotic con- 

agnus. duct of the ' Merchant Adventurers ' (a cor- 

poration dating from the fourteenth century), who resolved 
to buy for cash goods for exportation exactly as they 
would have done if there had been trade as usual. This, 
of course, locked up much of their capital, and even 
hazarded their credit with foreign countries. It was, 
therefore, most important that restrictions should cease ; 
and this was finally effected (April 1496) by a treaty 
called by the Flemings the ' Intercursus Magnus.' It 
guaranteed freedom of trade, without licenses or pass- 
ports, and in all commodities, between England, Ireland, 
and Calais on the one hand, and Brabant, Flanders, 
Hainault, Holland, and Mecheln on the other. Each 
contracting nation was to be allowed to possess houses 
suitable for themselves and their merchandise in the 
dominion of the others ; and while the traders were to 
pay all customary dues, they were also to be reinstated in 



1496 - Charles VIII. 51 

all their former privileges. So welcome was the treaty 
to both parties, that the English merchants, on arriving 
at Antwerp, were escorted to their house in a kind of 
triumph by the whole population. It is not without 
regret that we find the Merchant Adventurers so far pre- 
suming on their services at a critical time as to make in 

1497 a determined attempt to engross to themselves the 
whole foreign trade of the country, and to prevent all 
who did not belong to their corporation from resorting 
to countries abroad without its license. They made the 
matter worse by claiming the license-money for a 
' fraternity of St. Thomas of Canterbury' — an intrusion 
of religious pretences which was not likely to com- 
mend their view to the general community ; especially as 
an old claim of 35. \d. was now raised to no less than 5/., 
besides further demands for entrance money from in- 
dividuals. Yet most of this outrageous claim was 
conceded to them (though with a proviso that 6/. 135'. \d. 
should be the highest sum Avhich they were to demand 
from any one for a license to trade) ; and the powers 
which they thus acquired remained for many years a 
source of ever-recurring controversy. 



CHAPTER V. 



ALLIANCES AGAINST FRANCE. DEATH OF HENRY. 

I497-1509. 

To trace Henry's connexions with the French wars in 

Italy, and his reason for joining the Italian league against 

Charles VIII. in 1496, it is necessary to go 

back to events two years earlier. Charles viii. in 

had carried out in August 1494 the attempt ^^' 

on Italy of which his ambassadors had spoken in 



52 The Early Tudors. 1496 

England, not heeding either the dissuasions of his wise 
sister, or the dying advice of Louis XI. to give France 
at least five or six years of rest. He had in his mind a 
collection of the strangest and most confused motives 
and purposes that can be conceived. The strongest 
feeling of all was the vanity which made him wish to 
stand forth as a youthful Caesar or Charlemagne, at 
the head of a France which the late annexations had 
made stronger than it had been for centuries. Besides 
this he had a fitful belief that he was divinely ordained 
to break the power of the Turks ; but his notions of the 
way to accomplish this were as indirect as those of his 
predecessor St. Louis, who landed at Tunis in order to 
conquer Jerusalem. First Naples must be subdued, 
then the whole of Italy ; after this, it would be easy to 
become king of Greece and to organise the whole for the 
conquest of the Holy City. As to the first step, he might 
claim Naples as being a titular possession of Rene of 
Anjou, who had ceded his dominions to Louis XL ; indeed 
Rene had been nominally king of Jerusalem as well, 
so that this claim too had been conveyed by the same 
cession. It is hardly possible to imagine a more irrational 
mode of opposing the victorious Turks ; for Charles's plans 
were sure to shatter rather than consolidate the means 
of resistance by setting one Italian State against another. 
Besides this, it was necessary, before he started, to 
bribe other princes not to attack his own dominions 
during his absence ; and for this purpose he surrendered, 
to Maximilian, Artois and Franche Comte, and to Ferdi- 
nand, Roussillon and the Cerdagne. Of these districts 
the first two had been given up to Louis XL in 148 1, 
and their retrocession now laid France open on the 
north-east ; the latter were the keys of Catalonia, also 
pledged to Louis in exchange for his support at a critical 



1496 . Charles VI IT. 53 

juncture, and their recovery was now regarded by the 
Spaniards as hardly less important than the conquest 
of Granada. Yet, after all, Maximilian was not concili- 
ated, for he knew that Charles hoped to make himself 
a kind of Eastern emperor, and therefore his rival ; nor 
yet Ferdinand, who was sure to take the first opportunity 
for supporting the Aragonese dynasty of Naples which 
Charles intended to dethrone. In Italy itself the only 
ally of France was Ludovico Sforza, who had usurped 
Milan from his nephew Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, and 
in order to retain it was delighted to throw all Italy into 
confusion by a French invasion. 

Only the briefest summary of the French operations 
can be given here. Charles at once alienated Ludovico 
Sforza by supporting his nephew in a fit of romantic 
generosity, and lost the hope of Florentine friendship by 
insisting on entering the city as a conqueror, and on 
delivering Pisa from its supremacy ; he also began the 
bad fashion of carrying off works of art to ornament his 
own capital. In the States of the Church he occupied 
the fortresses, and drove the Pope and Cardinals to take 
refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo. The result of all 
these follies was that, although the extraordinary un- 
popularity of Alfonso of Aragon made the conquest of 
Naples as rapid as one within our own memory, it was 
utterly impossible to hold the country. For a league 
against France was secretly formed by Venice, Ferdinand, 
Pope Alexander VI., Maximilian, and Sforza. These 
powers undertook to cut Charles off from France, and if 
possible to take him prisoner. He, however, succeeded 
in making his way through the opposing forces at 
Fornovo, near Piacenza, leaving behind him 9,000 men to 
hold his conquests, but appearing afterwards to forget 



54 The Early Tudors. 1496 

ail about these unfortunate troops, who perished almost 
entirely by war and disease. 

The manner in which these events influenced Henry's 

policy was curious and characteristic. Of course it was 

ordinarily the interest of an English sovereign 

Royal ^Q form no very close connexions either with 

mariiages. -' 

The Italian France or Spain, but to allow these powers to 
weaken themselves and each other by per- 
petual strife, so that neither might be able to join with Scot- 
land in attacking him. The annexation of Bretagne had, 
however, caused in England a positive hatred of France, 
while the fact that her King was engaged in enterprises so 
far away made it safe to side with Spain against him. 
Ferdinand and Isabella on their part were willing to 
draw towards Henry, in order to use him as an ally in 
the rear of their great enemy. In fact, the Spanish 
sovereigns had for some time been looking for oppor- 
tunities of conciliating him ; and their ambassador, Don 
Pedro de Ayala, had been most influential in persuading 
James of Scotland to give up his support of Warbeck, 
thus freeing Henry from the great danger of his reign 
and raising the value of his friendship. Two marriages 
were now planned with the object of uniting both Scotland 
and Spain with England, and detaching both irrevocably 
from the French alliance. Henry's eldest son Arthur was 
to be the husband of Katheririe, the younger daughter 
of Ferdinand and Isabella, and his daughter Margaret 
was to become Queen of Scotland. The consequences of 
these two marriages would be wide-reaching. That with 
Scotland might lead to the union of the two countries by 
the succession of a Scottish prince to the English throne ; 
if this happened, Henry acutely remarked that Scotland 
would still be only an accession to England, and not 



1496-7 The SpmiisJi Marriage. 55 

England to Scotland, inasmuch as the greater would 
necessarily draw the less. That with Spain would 
directly cause firmer friendship and more vigorous 
commercial intercourse with the Netherlands, as the 
Archduke Philip, Maximilian's eldest son, had married 
Juana, Katherine's elder sister ; and this again would 
compel the Duchess Margaret of Burgundy to desist 
from any further Yorkist enterprises against Henry. 
Yet, with all these motives to conclude Arthur's marriage 
at once, the negotiations for it went on slowly. An 
agreement was formed about its conditions in September 
1496; on August 15, 1497, the betrothal took place 
at Woodstock, but the marriage itself was delayed till 
November 1501. The same kind of caution showed 
itself in Henry's adhesion (September 1496) to the 
Italian League. He accompanied this with a stipulation 
that he should not, like the other members of the con- 
federacy, be called upon to make war with Charles. 
Ferdinand was willing to receive him into the League 
even on these terms, feeling sure that circumstances 
would soon compel him to take a more decided part. 
Meantime the King of Aragon was preparing, as late 
historical discoveries have shown, a plan for overthrowing 
the peculiar liberties oftheGaUican Church, as established 
by Charles VIL, the grandfather of the present King; but 
for these, it was thought, no king of France would ever 
dare to wage war against the Pope as Charles had been 
doing, or to show himself so disobedient to his spiritual 
authority. That the marriage of Katherine should have 
been thus planned with the decided object of strengthen- 
ing the Papacy may surely be considered as one of 
the most striking instances on record of the irony 
of fate. As having this object, it could not but be 
religiously dangerous to England and ominous to our 



56 The Ea7'Iy Tiidors . 1 500 

liberties. Lord Bacon remarks that prosecutions for 
heresy were rare under Henry VII. ; yet they were 
not unknown, for Joan Boughton, Lady Young, and 
several other persons had been burned as Wycliffites in 
1494 and the following years, and the spirit of heresy 
was abroad. What then was likely to be the effect of 
so close an alliance with Ferdinand and Isabella, who 
had allowed the Inquisition to burn 500 persons annually 
for many years together in their dominions ? Here again, 
we should feel some gratitude to the sovereign who, 
whether from timidity and indecision, or from something 
witliin him which did not love cruelty, did after all guard 
us from the worst risks which his policy was likely in 
itself to bring on. 

The proposal of a Crusade by Alexander VI. in 1500, 
on different principles from those pursued by Charles 

VIII., produced a fresh indication of Henry's 
refilled? unwillingness to trust the Pope too far. When 

asked to join with Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, 
Venice, France, and Spain in a combined attack against 
the Turks, he replied with hardly concealed contempt 
that no prince on earth should be more forward than he 
to join in so holy an enterprise, but that surely the 
Mediterranean powers, being so much nearer than he was 
to the scene of action, and so much better supplied with 
ships and galleys, ought to take the initiative in it. Yet 
if these should refuse, rather than his Holiness should go 
alone, he would wait upon him as soon as he could be 
ready, ' always provided that he might first see all differ- 
ences among Christian princes fully settled, and might 
have some good Italian ports put into his hands for the 
retreat and safeguard of his men.' That the envoy should 
be ' nothing at all discontented ' with this answer seems to 
show that the plan was not intended to be really serious. 



1500-r - The Spanish Marriage. 57 

At the time of Katherine's betrothal, when she was 
only thirteen years old, and her bridegroom three years 
younger, the question had been raised in 

. ^ Prince 

Spain whether she should be sent to England Arthur and 
for education. Opinions varied on this point, 
some maintaining that Henry's court was morally by no 
means a fit place for the training of a young lady, others 
that, as she would have to go there at last, it would be 
better that she should have as little remembrance as 
possible of any happier home. At the end of 1 500 her 
journey was at length to take place ; and hearing that 
her entrance into London was to be magnificent, Isabella 
wrote entreating Henry to curtail such expenses, and give 
Katherine more, if possible, of his fatherly affection in 
lieu of them. She was to be endowed at once with the 
third part of the principality of Wales, of the dukedom of 
Cornwall, and of the earldom of Chester ; and, in case of 
her becoming queen, she was to be ' as richly endowed as 
any former queen had ever been.' In exchange for this 
somewhat hazy promise, she signed a renunciation of her 
dowry of 200,000 ducats ; the young couple were married 
in the following November, and sent to reside at Ludlow 
Castle, from which the poor young bridegroom wrote to 
his father after a week or two that he had never con- 
ceived the possibility of such happiness as he was then 
enjoying. His occupations also seem to have been truly 
royal ; much of the town of Ludlow had been destroyed 
in the civil wars, and he encouraged its restoration by 
all possible means. Besides this, he devoted himself, with 
the help of the Welsh members of his Council, to the 
improvement of the laws by which the Principality was 
governed. He is praised too for the peaceable disposi- 
tion which made him check at once all quarrels among 



58 The Early Tudors. 1502 

the members of his household. But all this genial pro- 
mise was cut short by a misfortune like that which carried 
off at a very early age the two other sons-in-law of the 
Catholic sovereigns. A neglected cold settled on Arthur's 
lungs ; and he expired within five months of his wedding- 
day. Before the unhappy Katherine emerged from her 
retirement, an ambassador came from Spain with a public 
commission to bring back the Princess, at the same time 
claiming her dowry and payment of the income guaran- 
teed to her : yet so important did Henry's alliance 
appear to Ferdinand and Isabella, that they gave their 
envoy private instructions to arrange, if possible, that the 
young widow should marry the Duke of York her brother- 
in-law, a boy five years younger than herself. Of course 
such a marriage was irregular, and would require a 
special dispensation from the Pope ; yet, considering the 
object proposed by the league between Ferdinand and 
Henry, it seemed not impossible that such a point might 
be conceded, especially if, as reported, Katherine had been 
Arthur's wife only in name. Subject to the chances of 
papal pliancy, the King thought it well to allow the parties 
to be affianced to one another ; whether the marriage actu- 
ally took place or not would depend on future combina- 
tions. Meantime, the Archbishop of Canterbury's countiy 
house at Croydon was appointed for Katherine's resi- 
dence ; and she was treated well or ill according to the 
ebbs and flows of Henry's good will for Spain, holding, as 
she did, a kind of political agency for the interests of her 
native country. At one time Henry VII. conceived the 
outrageous design of marrying her himself, but was de- 
terred from it by Isabella's declaration that such a notion 
was ' too wicked to be so much as named in Christian 



1 502 Louis XIL 59 

The conclusive reason for Ferdinand and Isabella's 
urgency in the afifair of their daughter's second marriage 
must be looked for in the state of France, where 
Charles VIII. had been succeeded, in April, Katherine's 
1498, by his cousin Louis of Orleans, whom we mardage 
have seen revolting against him in Bretagne. 
The new King's first care was to bribe Pope Alexander VI. 
to grant a divorce from his unloved wife Jeanne of France, 
the daughter of Louis XL, and to secure Bretagne to the 
French Crown by at once marrying Anne, the late King's 
widow. Immediately on ascending the throne, he assumed 
the titles of King of Naples and Duke of Milan, the former 
as heir to Charles VIII. , the latter as being descended from 
the Visconti of Milan. Before the year of his accession 
ended he aUied himself with Venice and the Pope, over- 
ran the Milanese, dethroned Ludovico Sforza, who had 
been restored to his dukedom after Charles VIII. 's re- 
treat from Italy, and imprisoned him in the terrible castle 
of Loches, near Tours. He then made with Ferdinand 
the strange agreement that the two powers should divide 
Naples between them, Apulia and Calabria being assigned 
to Spain, and the Terra di Lavoro and Abruzzo to France. 
For this purpose the French invaded the country in July 
1 501, took Frederic King of Naples prisoner, and occu- 
pied the provinces assigned to them, while Gonzalo de 
Cordova, Ferdinand's general, reduced Tarento and the 
southern districts. The natural consequences of this pre- 
posterous contract were not long in appearing ; the two 
Kings differed as to the division of the central provinces, 
each claiming them as belonging to his own portion. 
This quarrel was rising to a height at the beginning of the 
year 1502 ; so that just at the time of Arthur's death the 
Catholic sovereigns had the strongest motives to hold fast 
to the English alliance. Indeed their ardent desire for 



6o TJie Early Tiedors. 1506 

this made them, as it would appear, overlook many of 
the difficulties in the way of Katherine's re-marriage. 
Henry, on his part, was not without scruples, which were 
strengthened by the decided opinion expressed by War- 
ham, Bishop-elect of London, against the Pope's power 
to sanction it. However Bishop Fox and other high 
authorities were of the contrary opinion ; indeed, consid- 
ering what the Pope had already done in the way of 
allowing divorces, Henry might think it hard to assign 
any limits to his power in this direction. At any rate, the 
magnificent victories of Gonzalo de Cordova in Naples 
soon made him think no more of his doubts ; and he gave 
fiiU assent to the future marriage, yet by a refinement of 
caution made his son execute privately a formal protest 
against it. 

The latter days of Henry were once more embit- 
tered by the fear of a Yorkist insurrection. The Duke 
^, ■ , of Suffolk was a still surviving brother of 

The Arch- ^ 

duke Philip Lord Lincoln, and had commanded for the 
ng an . King at Blackheath Field. This nobleman, 
having committed manslaughter in a brawl, was forced 
by Henry to appear personally in court, and there to sue 
out his pardon. Affronted at being thus treated like 
a common person, he fled to his aunt the Duchess of 
Burgundy in Flanders. Finding little encouragement 
there, he made his peace with Henry and returned home. 
But just before Prince Arthur's marriage, for which he 
had incurred large debts, he once more retreated to 
Flanders, in the hope that new discontents at home might 
afford him an opportunity. On this Henry resorted to 
his former arts. Sir Robert Curzon was instructed to go 
over to Flanders, pretend to join Suffolk, and gain in- 
formation as to his confederates at home. This led to 
the arrest of the King's brother-in-law the Earl of 



1506 - Philip and Jiiana. 61 

Devonshire (husband of Elizabeth's sister Katherine), 
and of Lord Abergavenny ; others of meaner rank, such 
as Sir James Tirrel, the murderer of the Princes in the 
Tower, were at the same time executed. The plans 
of Suffolk were thus deranged, and he was reduced to 
live in hopeless exile, receiving, however, protection in 
Flanders from the Archduke Philip, who by the death 
of Isabella was now King of Castile in right of Juana 
his wife. Suffolk was, however, driven from this refuge 
by a singular accident. In January 1506 Philip and 
Juana were on the way to Spain in order to take posses- 
sion of their heritage. Their fleet ran down the English 
Channel, firing guns by way of bravado when they were 
near the land ; but in the midst of this amusement they 
were surprised by a storm which shattered and dispersed 
their vessels, driving the sovereigns themselves into the 
harbour of Melcombe. No accident could possibly be 
more delightful to Henry ; for he thus got into his power 
the prince who had been his most determined adversary, 
launching Warbeck's expedition against him, and agreeing 
to receive the Crown of England in the event of its 
success. He eagerly invited Philip and Juana to visit 
him at Windsor ; where, under cover of an honourable re- 
ception, they would be still more completely in his power. 
Amid a thousand courtesies, he still held firmly to one 
main point ; Suffolk must be surrendered. This was at last 
agreed to, though with extreme unwillingness ; Henry on 
his part promising not to punish him for his rebellion, and 
consenting that the matter should be so arranged that 
the exile might seem to return by his own free will. At 
the same time Philip was compelled to make a new 
commercial treaty, which was so unpopular among his 
subjects that they called it the ' Intercursus Malus ' (by 
way of contrast with the great treaty of 1496), complaining 



62 The Early Tudors. 1506- 

that it sacrificed their interests by allowing English cloth 
to be sold in Flemish towns generally, instead of only at 
the two emporia of Bruges and Antwerp, and thus taking 
out of their hands the profits of local trade in their own 
country. 

Henry was now a widower of some years' standing ; 
the fair and good Queen Elizabeth having died in 1501, 
Anxious at the thought that the succession to the throne 
now depended on the life of one son, he began to think 
of marrying again. He was not too old to hope for fresh 
offspring, though his weak constitution gave him an ap- 
pearance of age. Several ladies were at different times 
proposed ; and he has been deservedly ridiculed for the 
catalogue of enquiries which he directed to be made 
about the personal charms of some of them. He urgently 
pressed for a portrait of the widowed Queen of Naples, 
Isabella's niece ; but met with a blank refusal — the lady 
would not allow her beauty to be sent about on approval. 
Maximilian's daughter Margaret, after being first Queen- 
elect of France, then wife to the heir-apparent of Spain, 
then Duchess of Savoy, seemed at one time likely to end 
with being Queen of England. Besides this, Henry had 
been more than suspected of ardently admiring Queen 
Juana on the Windsor visit, when the evident ill-health 
of her husband gave a prospect of his death, which hap- 
pened a few months after. All these schemes having 
failed, the King made a virtue of necessity, and remained 
for the rest of his life unmarried. 

A curious attempt was made in 1 508 to procure from 
Pope Julius II. (who had succeeded Alexander VI. in 
1503) the canonisation of King Henry VI. Lord Bacon 
hints that the fees payable to the Roman Court on such 
occasions were unreasonably high, amounting as they 
did to nearly 1,000 ducats. He inclines, however, to the 



-1509 ■ Enipson and Dudley. 63 

view that Julius was too sensible so to honour one who 
was ' little better than a natural.' That the expense 
would not have deterred Henry is proved by his having- 
willingly paid similar fees for the canonisation of Anselm, 
which took place at this time. 

As there were no regular parliamentary subsidies in 
the last thirteen years of Henry's reign, he had to provide 
forthe expenses of government otherwise, and 
did so by means which have stained his Dudley!^" 
memory deeply. He made money out of 
every office in his Court, received bribes for conferring 
bishoprics, and sold pardons to those concerned in the 
Cornish rebellion, the sums paid varying from i/. to 200/. 
But far the most discreditable exactions were those which 
are connected with the names of Richard Empson and 
Edmund Dudley — the former a Towcester tradesman's 
son, employed by Henry in imitation of Louis XL's love 
for low-born ministers ; the latter the founder, at least, 
of a great family, as his son John played a considerable 
part in English history under his successive titles of Lisle, 
Warwick, and Northumberland. These men enriched 
Henry by a course of the most odious chicane directed 
against wealthy men all over England. We hear of their 
prosecuting Sir William Capel for being remiss in en- 
quiring about base coin when Lord Mayor of London, 
and fining him 2,000/. As this was the second time Sir 
William had been thus treated, he firmly refused to pay, 
and remained a prisoner in the Tower till the end of the 
reign. Other persons were indicted of crimes before 
magistrates, and then left in prison untried, in defiance 
of Magna Charta, till they consented to pay fines or 
ransoms for their freedom. Sometimes, as Lord Bacon 
tells us, Empson and Dudley even dispensed with the 
help of magistrates, and committed accused persons to 



64 The Early Tudors. 1509 

prison by their own authority, the pecuniary object in 
each case being the same. They got enormous sums for 
restoration in cases of technical outlawry, and even tried 
to establish the principle that such a composition should 
never be less than half a man's income for two years 
after the outlawry began. Endless vexations were also 
practised at times when new heirs were succeeding to 
landed property, by maintaining and aggravating every 
feudal exaction applicable to such occasions. Espe- 
cially was this the case with royal wards, whose lands 
were given up to them only after paying extravagant 
fines. Empson and Dudley had also agents everywhere 
employed in the detestable task of hunting out defects 
in the title of landholders, and trying to revive obsolete 
rights of the Crown. This practice, a return to which 
had in after years so much to do with the ruin of 
Charles I., would almost certainly have overthrown both 
Henry himself and his dynasty if it had been carried on 
long ; as it was, his feeling of his approaching end made 
him inclined to listen to remonstrances, some of which were 
urged, as we are glad to hear, by the honourable bold- 
ness of the Court preachers. Yet the abuses were not 
restrained till the King had amassed treasure to the sur- 
prising amount of 1,800,000/. ; while his agents had laid 
up for themselves a store of public hatred which only 
waited for their master's death to discharge itself. 

Henry's last public act was the conclusion of a project 
of marriage between his daughter Mary and Charles 

Prince of Castile, the son of Philip and Juana. 
Henry VII. ^e thus hopcd that he had built round his 

kingdom the long hoped-for ' wall of brass ; ' " 
since he was to have for his son-in-law the King of Scot- 
land on the one side and the future Lord of Spain and 
Burgundy on the other. When he perceived his end 



1 509 Legislation for Ireland. 65 

approaching, he proclaimed a general pardon for State 
offences, and also showed some desire that unjust acqui- 
sitions of the Crown should be restored. Soon after this 
he died calmly at Richmond (April 22, 1509), at the age 
of only fifty-two, and after a reign of twenty-three years 
and eight months, the troubles of which had long ago 
brought on him infirmities far beyond his years. 



CHAPTER VI. 



LEGISLATION FOR IRELAND. ENGLISH LAWS OF 

HENRY VII. FOREIGN TRADE. MARITIME DISCOVERY. 

I485-I509. 

The administration of Ireland in this reign (as indeed 
in most reigns) stood on such a different footing from 
that of England, that it is well to speak of it 
separately ; if, indeed, we ought not rather irek„d^ 
to say that all administration there had come 
to an end since the days when the popular government 
of Richard Duke of York had drawn away so much of 
the country's strength to perish in the battle of Wakefield. 
Of course, as the Wars of the Roses got fiercer and fiercer, 
it became more and more out of the question to send 
either men or money there, or even to forbear from re- 
calling its English colonists. Thus the purely Irish fami- 
lies recovered much of their lost ground, especially in 
Ulster ; in the South and West the few remaining Eng- 
lish were content to assimilate themselves to the native 
Irish. So the Geraldines, as Spenser tells us, were so 
enraged at the death of the Earl of Desmond in 1467 that 
they rose in arms against Edward IV. and renounced all 
obedience to the Crown of England, carrying with them 
the greater part of the English in Munster; while the 
F 



66 The Early Tudors. 1485- 

Norman families of Butler and De Burgh became as Irish 
as the O' Neils or O'Donnells, living according to Brehon 
law, and making private war at their pleasure. Many of 
them took Irish names, adopted the Irish language, 
dressed in Irish fashion, contracted marriage and foster- 
age with the natives, formed their retainers into bastard 
septs, and instead of regular rents and services, learned 
to practise the irregular exactions called by the English 
Coyne and Livery. ' These renegades to Irishry,' says 
Mr. Goldwin Smith, ' seem to have imbibed even the pecu- 
liarities of Irish intellect ; for the Earl of Kildare, the 
head of the Geraldines, being summoned to answer for an 
act of sacrilege in burning down the Cathedral of Cashel, 
pleaded in his defence that he "thought the Archbishop 
was in it." ' To the strange attraction which thus acted 
upon the English settlers must be ascribed many of the 
sternest and most repressive Irish laws of the Plan- 
tagenets. Thus if the Statute of Kilkenny (passed under 
Lionel Duke of Clarence in 1367) forbade the English to 
let the Irish graze cattle on their lands, its object was not 
so much to hinder Irishmen from prospering as to keep 
Englishmen aloof from the companionship which tempted 
them so strongly to forswear their country. The ' un- 
chartered freedom ' of Irish life carried with it so strange 
an allurement that it was allwhich law could do to con- 
tend against it. 

If Ireland had any preference for either of the great con- 
tending parties in England, it was, as we have seen, for 

the House of York ; and from this cause chiefly 
Laws!"^^' sprang the change of Henry VII. 's mode of 

governing the dependency which on ascend- 
ing the throne he had found all but severed from his 
dominions. At first he had thought it best to employ the 
native nobility for this purpose, and had chosen for 



-1 509 Legislation for Ireland. 6^ 

Deputy the Earl of Kildare — setting him, as the story 
ran, to rule all Ireland, because all Ireland could not 
rule him. When, however, he had time to reflect on the 
dangers springing from the Irish support of Simnel and 
Warbeck, from, which he and his dynasty had escaped 
so narrowly, he perceived the necessity of bringing the 
country under a more regular government. Accordingly 
he sent over in 1494 (at the time when Warbeck was 
preparing for his descent on England) Sir Edward 
Poynings as Lord Deputy, a statesman and commander 
well experienced in the most important affairs of the 
time. Poynings soon found that his mihtary enterprises 
against Warbeck's wild Irish supporters in Ulster were 
always foiled ' in respect of the mountains and fastnesses ' 
in which the enemy found refuge ; on this he accused 
his predecessor Lord Kildare of correspondence with 
the rebels, procured his attainder by the Irish Parliament, 
and ordered him to be arrested and sent to England. 
Meanwhile he summoned a Parliament at Drogheda, and 
there carried, among other Acts, the two most commonly 
associated with his name. By the first of these it was 
provided that ' all statutes lately made in England should 
be deemed good and effectual in Ireland.' It had been 
common, as Mr. Hallam remarks, to extend to Ireland 
the operation of English statutes, even when that country 
was not particularly named, if the judges thought that 
the subject was sufficiently general to require it ; and a 
majority of them had held in Richard III.'s reign that 
borough towns in Ireland were bound by statutes made 
in England. From the date of Poynings' Law all doubt 
was held to be cleared away as regards any English 
statutes passed before it (though it is hard to see how 
the expression ' statutes lately passed ' could be so all- 
embracing) ; those subsequent to that date were not 



68 The Early Tudors. 1485- 

binding on the people of Ireland, unless specially named 
or included under general words (such as ' all his Majesty's 
dominions '). It may be well here to remark that a de- 
claratory Act of Parliament was passed in comparatively 
recent times (1719) making it still mor^ clear that the 
Crown, with the consent of the Lords and Commons of 
Great Britain in Parliament, had power to make laws 
to bind the people of Ireland. It was the repeal of this 
law which in 1782 led to that independence of the Irish 
Parliament which lasted up to the Union of 1800. 

Still more important was the provision, in another 
section of the same statute, that no parliament should be 
held in Ireland without the bills intended to pass at 
it being submitted to the King in Council; these were 
then to be returned to Ireland under the Great Seal, and 
either passed or rejected as seemed good to the Irish 
Parliament, but not altered or amended. Thus the Irish 
colonists, in spite of the status of Ireland as a separate 
kingdom, were debarred from the privilege of independent 
legislation ; yet when we consider how small a portion 
of the population of Ireland they formed, and by what 
oppressive means they habitually aimed at securing the 
ascendency, it can hardly be seriously denied that some 
such control was really imperative. This, in fact, is clear 
enough from other parts of the same statute which were 
aimed at curbing the lawlessness of the settlers. In case 
of one of their number being murdered, they were forbid- 
den by it from pillaging or exacting a fine from the sept of 
the slayer, though this had been expressly allowed by the 
Dublin Parliament in 1475. Noblemen were restrained 
from private war, and from making the citizens of towns 
their retainers for this purpose ; and ' coyne ' and ' livery' 
were again forbidden under stronger penalties. 

In the same year Henry suppressed the so-called 



-1 509 . Legislation for Ireland. 69 

'Fraternity of St. George' in Ireland, which had been 
estabhshed to meet the anarchy caused there by the 
Wars of the Roses, and bore some resemblance to the 
Spanish ' Hermandad ' described in Chapter 
I. It consisted of thirteen deputies sent up by s^George" 
the counties of Kildare, Dublin, Meath, and 
Louth, who bound themselves to maintain a small and 
quickly moving force of 120 archers and 40 horsemen, 
always ready to arrest rebels and those for whose appre- 
hension warrants had been issued. Every year on St. 
George's day the members met at Dublin and elected a 
captain for the ensuing year ; to defray their expenses, the 
government had assigned to them the proceeds of a tax 
of one shilling in the pound on merchandise landed at 
Dublin. Doubtless the mode in which such a body acted 
would have too much of the appearance of private war to 
find much favour in Henry's eyes. After the recall of 
Sir Edward Poynings, the country was governed in an 
irregular way ; sometimes under Lord Kildare (whose 
attainder was reversed by the English Parliament in 
1495), sometimes under English governors, one of whom 
was Henry Dean, Bishop of Bangor, and afterwards 
Archbishop of Canterbury, whose power of persuasion 
had done much to secure the passing of Poynings' laws 
by the Irish Parliament. 

The mention just made of Henry's legislation in 
Ireland may properly introduce some account of his Eng- 
lish enactments, which are most important and 
practical, founded as they are mainly on the He^ry'vil 
admirable principle that obedience to existing 
laws and a general feeling of responsibility are what a 
good government should chiefly aim afsecuring. In fact, 
in spite of the many faults of Henry's administration, Lord 
Bacon seems quite justified in stating that in legislation 



7o The Early Tudors. 1485- 

he deserves a place among our early kings next to that of 
Edward I. With regard to the power of the Crown he 
carried two highly important statutes. The first is that 
which exempts from the penalties of treason all who do 
service to a de facto king. Lord Bacon's view of this 
law is that it was ' rather just than legal, rather mag- 
nanimous than provident,' as it made rebelhon easy by 
securing from punishment those who served any pre- 
tender to the Crown who might be strong enough to 
establish his power for a time. Yet, on the other hand, 
it would make rebels begin sooner to think of an accom- 
modation, instead of fighting on as men do whose life is 
certain to be forfeited in case of defeat ; and was, there- 
fore, so far in favour of a king dejiire. And when we think 
how manifestly just it was that the same law which made 
it treason (as in Sir W. Stanley's case) to express the 
slightest and most hypothetical doubt as to the title of 
an actual sovereign should also protect those who upheld 
it, we may be inclined to recur once more to Burke's 
admirable dictum, that in political matters magnanimity 
is always the truest wisdom. This law, passed in 1496, 
was in a manner counterpoised by an earlier one (1488) 
which made it a capital crime to conspire the death of 
any of the King's Council, or of any lord of the realm. 
That of 1496 did not protect persons serving a possible 
Republic or possible Protector of England. Had it done 
so, Sir Henry Vane could not have been executed at the 
Restoration for the one crime of having been an energetic 
minister under the Republic. 

Another class of laws was aimed at the repression of 
dCts of violence. Thus it was made in 1488 a capital 
crime to carry off heiresses or women of property in order 
to marry them by force ; an instance had occurred in 
which a widow named Margaret had been so treated by 



-1509 Henry VII.' s English Laws. 71 

a band of men a hundred in number, who had been pur- 
sued by forty others ' modo guerrino armati ' (armed in 
warhke manner) into another county, and there overcome 
and arrested. In the same year it was ordained that 
trials for murder should follow while the memory of the 
deed was fresh and evidence easily attainable, instead of 
being delayed, as they often were, for a year and a day, 
in order that the friends of the deceased might have a 
chance of first proceeding by the private and vindictive 
mode of action called ' Appeal of Murder,' which Lord 
Macaulay has described in its application to the case of 
Spencer Compton. Another Act of 1488 allowed justices 
to determine without a jury all offences against unrepealed 
statutes, except treason, murder, and felony ; it was on 
this statute that Empson and Dudley relied in trying men 
privately in financial cases. 

But far the most important of the laws passed by Henry 
in favour of public order was that which in 1488 estab- 
lished the celebrated Court of Star Chamber. 
Its preamble states that ' the King, remem- chamber 
bering how by unlawful maintenances, giv- 
ing of liveries, . . . untrue demeanings of sheriffs in 
the making of panels, by taking of money by juries, and 
by great riots and unlawful assemblies the policy and 
good order of this realm is almost subdued, and that for 
punishing these inconveniences little or nothing may be 
found by enquiry ' (that is by an ordinary trial before a 
jury), ' ordains that the Chancellor, Treasurer, and Privy 
Seal, with a Bishop and a temporal Lord of the Council 
and two Judges . . . shall have authority to call before 
them offenders and witnesses, and to examine and pun- 
ish them according to statute.' This was held to be not so 
much a novelty as a parliamentary recognition of an an- 
cient authority inherent in the Privy Council. At any 



72 The Early Tudors. 1485- 

rate it furnished the Crown with a most powerful instru- 
ment for checking abuses, and was soon held to apply to 
forgery, fraud, perjury, contempt of court, and many 
other crimes ; nay, even occasionally to civil causes. 
Hardly a term passed without juries being fined by it for 
acquitting felons or murderers contrary to the evidence. 
Sir John Hussey, a member of the Privy Council, was 
prosecuted in the Star Chamber in 1492 by Alice Ford- 
man, as accessory to the murder of her husband ; noble- 
men were indicted before it for sheltering outlaws or for 
interfering with the election of sheriffs, and justices of the 
peace punished for neglecting their duties. The fines 
imposed at this time by it, though mostly less ruinous 
than those of after days, when prosecutor and judges 
were alike enriched by them, were still such as thoroughly 
to daunt evil-doers ; sometimes also men of rank had to 
appear almost naked and sue for pardon. Above all, the 
Court of Star Chamber aimed at enforcing the statute of 
Livery, which prohibited under heavy penalties the main- 
tenance by noblemen of large bodies of retainers wearing 
their livery and ready to wage private war in their behalf. 
All histories mention the enormous fine of 15,000 marks 
(equivalent to more than 100,000/. of our money) which 
Henry inflicted on his staunch supporter the Earl of 
Oxford, for breaking this statute in order to entertain him 
more splendidly ; it appears to be a close imitation of the 
conduct of Louis XI. in vindicating his sole right of chase 
by burning all the nets and other implements collected 
by the Sire de Montmorency for his use on a visit. It 
was, however, far more justifiable than this act of the 
French King ; for it is evident that the Earl of Oxford's 
conduct, if established as a precedent, would at any time 
have justified noblemen in surrounding themselves with 
large bodies of warlike supporters just when the King 



-1509 Henry VII' s English Laws. 73 

was going to receive their hospitality, and thus to place 
himself most completely in their power if they had any 
treasonable intentions. 

Other laws of this period were aimed at benefiting 
the people according to the ideas then current. Henry, 
following the example of Ferdinand and Isabella, en- 
deavoured to regulate the weights and measures through- 
out England. He introduced the first Navi- 
gation Act, providing that wine and woad Law^&c°° 
from Saxony and Languedoc should be con- 
veyed only in English vessels, and thus sacrificing cheap- 
ness in these commodities to the hope of creating a navy. 
He ordered that the byelaws of trade guilds should not 
be binding till they had been sanctioned by the great 
officers of State. With a notion of humanity much in 
advance of his time, he got Parliament to enact that gaol- 
erships should not be patent offices, but should be always 
under the control and responsibility of the sheriffs. 
Abuses in pi"isons were, however, too deeply rooted to be 
thus abolished. And he provided the order for suits in 
forma pauperis, in which attorneys and counsel are 
assigned free of all charges to very poor men — a fact on 
which Lord Campbell has made the interesting remark 
that in our day counsel are always anxious to do their 
very best on such occasions ; as also in defending per- 
sons accused of treason, when fees are illegal. 

Another important part of Henry's legislation was that 
which had to do with foreign trade. This occupied much 
of his attention, as we might expect from a „ ^ 
King who had watched Louis XL's exertions the Nether- 
in this line. The chief exports of England 
at this time were wool, cloth, and hides ; our lead mines 
roofed nearly all the cathedrals and large buildings of 
Europe, and of tin we had a monopoly. The chief 



74 The Early Tudor s. 1485- 

foreign market for wool was afforded by the Netherlands. 
Accordingly one of the main objects of our commercial 
policy was to foster this trade, and also, if possible, to 
force English cloth into sale in Flanders, in spite of the 
jealousy felt there against the rising manufactures of 
England, which were bidding fair to supersede their own. 
As we have seen, the risks from this cause were much 
aggravated by Margaret of Burgundy's vehement hatred 
to the Lancastrian King, which had once caused the 
transference to Calais of the English staple. When this 
cause of difference had at length ceased, the ' Intercursus 
Magnus ' of 1496 replaced the Flemish trade on a suffi- 
ciently liberal basis. Besides its already mentioned pro- 
visions, it ordained that custom-house officers were to be 
polite, and not to break up packages needlessly ; and that 
on no account were they to force sales to themselves. 
In case of injury, the aggrieved party was not to make 
reprisals, but to appeal to the offender's sovereign ; and, 
to avoid piracy, each owner was to deposit double the 
value of his ship and cargo, to be forfeited if his mariners 
could be proved guilty of that crime. Neither party was 
to allow foreign vessels to be attacked in its ports by any 
hostile power, or their plunder to be sold there : in case 
of shipwreck, the cargo might be reclaimed within a year 
and a day on payment of salvage expenses. Care was 
also taken to foster the Mediterranean trade, which sub- 
sequently lost much of its importance through Vasco de 
Gama's discovery of the sea route to the east by the 
Cape of Good Hope (1497) but was still considerable 
in Henry VII. 's time. It was conducted almost entirely 
through the republic of Venice, whose galleys used to 
come in flotillas to the English Channel, and unload at 
Sandwich, Southampton, or London. Their cargo con- 
sisted of spices (including pepper), Malmsey wine from 



-1509 Foreign Trade. 75 

the Morea and Crete ; sugar from Cyprus, Crete, and 
Alexandria ; silk from Persia, Syria, Greece, and Sicily ; 
cotton from Egypt and India ; glass from the East and 
from the Murano factories at Venice, together with paper, 
illuminated books, and other articles. The Venetians 
exported in return the standard English commodities of 
wool, cloth, hides, lead, and tin ; being liable, like other 
merchants, to a suit for ' non-use ' if they did not take 
return cargoes of English goods. 

The trade with France was chiefly for Gascon wines, 
woad from Toulouse, and salt, linen, and canvas from 
Bretagne. When Louis XII., in 1 504, avenged 
some injuries done to his subjects in England tradT 
by forbidding the export of wines in French 
bottoms, this naturally compelled the English to use 
their own vessels for this purpose — a tendency much 
strengthened by the Navigation Act already alluded to. 
From Spain came large quantities of sweet wines, fruit, 
and fine Cordovan leather manufactured from goat and 
kid skins, with the iron of Bilbao, which was much used 
for agricultural purposes because of its flexibility. The 
Spanish horses were also of a particularly fine breed and 
much prized as hacks and chargers. Accordingly the 
commercial intercourse with Spain was considerable, and 
our merchants in Spain and Andalusia obtained in 1530 
the privilege of meeting at Seville, Cadiz, or St. Lucar, 
and there electing their own governors, with ' twelve an- 
cient and expert persons to be their assistants;' so that 
they might be defended from Spanish exactions and the 
tyranny of the Inquisition. 

It is remarkable that an unadventurous reign like that of 
Henry VII. should have been one of such extensive mari- 
time discovery. The lead in this direction was of course 
taken by other nations, especially the Portuguese, who 



'](> The Early Tudors. 1485- 

were the first to apply the astrolabe to navigation (using it, 
as we do the sextant, for observations of latitude) and also 
,, r, the first to trust the mariner's compass for 

Voyages of '^ 

discovery. ocean voyages. They thus succeeded in 
Gama. reaching Cape Verde in 1443, Cape Sierra 

Columbus. LgQj^ jj^ j^g2_ Cape Lopez in 1469, and the 
Cape of Good Hope in i486 ; the right of discovery along 
the African coast was yielded to them by Spain in a treaty 
of 1479, ^i^ spite of the prior claims of the latter country as 
having colonised the Canaries in 1 393. The establishment 
of a Portuguese monopoly in this direction naturally turned 
the thoughts of mariners in another ; and as the hour had 
come when new discovery was almost imperative, so the 
man inspired to make it was not long wanting. In the 
year 1482, Christoval Colon (whose name was Latinised 
into ' Columbus ') vainly laid his projects for reaching 
Asia by sailing westward before the authorities of his 
native Genoa, who thought them beyond their means; 
and then before the Portuguese government, which tried 
to steal a march on him by privately despatching a vessel 
in the direction indicated by him. Deeply resenting this 
ungenerous conduct, he went to Spain in 1484, and, find- 
ing the delays there intolerable, despatched his brother 
Bartolommeo to England in the next year. Bartolommeo 
was however taken by pirates, and remained long in 
captivity; thus it was only on February 13, 1488, that 
he was able to present to Henry VII. a map of the world 
drawn by himself, and to ask his patronage for his brother. 
The King liked the scheme so well that his offers actually 
preceded those made in Spain to Columbus: yet by t 
new series of cross accidents Bartolommeo reached Spair 
only after his brother's departure from Palos in 1492, and 
in fact after he had discovered the West Indies. Never 
surely since the world began was the fate of nations and 



-1509 - Maritime Discovery. JJ 

continents decided by such a succession of strange 
casualties as those which on the one hand produced 
Columbus's success, and on the otlier ordained that 
Spain, not England, should be the power under whose flag 
it was achieved, and that the energy of our country should 
not be frittered away, as that of Spain was, upon a vast 
system of gold and silver mining by slave-labour. Mean- 
time a healthier though less romantic series of discoveries 
was giving England the first claim to a western empire 
of far superior ultimate value to all that even Mexico or 
Peru had to offer. 

As early as 1496 Henry VII. issued to John Cabot 
(Gaboto), a Genoese mariner long resident at Bristol, a 
patent of leave to discover unknown lands, ^, ^ , 

The Cabots. 

and to conquer and settle them. The King 
was to receive a fifth of the profits without paying any 
part of the charges ; instead of money, he gave a mono- 
poly of trade with the countries to be discovered, and 
their government subject to the English Crown. Like 
Columbus, Cabot hoped to find a passage to the Indies, 
only his aim was a north-western instead of a due 
westward route. One ship alone could be chartered ; 
this sailed from Bristol on June 24, 1497, and Cabot was 
soon rewarded by the discovery of Newfoundland, whose 
fog-banks must have been the strangest contrast to the 
sunny lands discovered by Columbus five years before. 
He then reached Cape Breton (which he called Prima 
Vista) and probably also Nova Scotia; thus seeing the 
mainland of America before Columbus, who only in his 
last voyage in 1498 coasted along the Isthmus of Panama. 
There is infinite reason to regret that Sebastian Cabot, 
John's son and successor, had not more of Columbus's 
enthusiasm and literary power, so as to put his memoirs in 
a shape which would have preserved them. We only know 



78 The Early Tudor s. 1485- 

that he made, almost immediately after his father's death, 
one or more voyages on the original track, going as far 
north as the Arctic Circle, but being hindered from press- 
ing beyond it or into Hudson's Bay by a mutiny of his 
crews, who were naturally alarmed at the masses of ice 
surrounding them. After this he entered the service of 
Spain, and in 1 525 was commissioned to make a voyage to 
the Moluccas by the newly-discovered Strait of Magellan. 
The discontent of his officers was, however, so threatening 
that he turned up the Rio de la Plata, and spent some 
years in exploring the countries near it, ascending in 
boats the rivers Parana and Paraguay, and asking in 
vain for help to colonise these fine plains. In the course 
of one of his voyages, it is hard to say which, he ran 
along the American coast as far south as Florida, thus 
surveying not less than 1800 miles of low and featureless 
shore. During his absence the Bristol merchants sent 
light vessels westward almost every year in quest of new 
lands, and had he been in England in 1 509, there is at 
least a possible chance that Henry's VIII. 's ambition 
might have been turned to discovery rather than war. 
Under Edward VI. he came here again, receiving a 
pension of 250 marks, and the title of 'Grand Pilot' 
— an office which appears to have been created for him. 
Curiously enough, the only personal glimpse of the great 
navigator which we can obtain is an account of his death- 
bed. Few men have ever lived a more active life ; nor 
were his efforts without immediate effect on the national 
welfare, considering the wealth ever since derived from 
the Newfoundland fisheries. But his chief glory will ever 
be that he provided against the time to come a reserved 
space practically inexhaustible for the swarming thou- 
sands of Northern Europe, where every nerve would be 
strung by hardship and peril, where, in spite of the vast 



-1509 . The Revival of Classical Learning. 79 

scale of obstacles, nature might still be subdued to men's 
needs, and where freedom would have a natural home. 
Such was the noble region discovered for England by 
this Italian mariner. Nor ought we to ignore the 
mental effect of such additions to knowledge, and the 
extraordinary stimulus which they gave to thought. Just 
as learned Romans felt that the world became grander to 
them when the mystery of Britain was at length revealed 
by Caesar's invasion, so thinking men at the close of the 
fifteenth century saw with a kind of rapture creation 
thus ' broadening on their view.' ' Before these days,' 
says Peter Martyr in a letter to Cardinal Sforza, ' hardly 
half of the world's circumference was known to geog- 
graphers ; of the rest, only the feeblest and most uncer- 
tain mention had ever been made. But now, glorious to 
relate, light has under the auspices of our sovereigns 
been thrown on the secret of the ages. I feel my heart 
elated with real blessedness when I confer with intelligent 
men who have been in those countries. Let others de-, 
light in avarice or the lusts of the flesh ; but let us be 
filled with rapture in thinking of God, who has revealed 
such wonders in our day.' 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE REVIVAL OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 
1 390-1 509. 

When the great masterpieces of ancient literature were 
first rediscovered and then spread far and wide by means 
of manuscript and printed copies, the effect 
on intellectual minds was not a little like |P''''tof the 

Renaissance. 

that described at the end of the last chapter. 

A wide and grand America of inward thought was restored 



8o . The Early Tudors. 1485- 

after centuries of oblivion, and that with the effect not 
merely o{ increasing knowledge, but of revolutionising 
all methods of reasoning, placing all opinions in a differ- 
ent point of view, and awakening a new and energetic 
trust in the future. There could be no doubt whatever 
that life was worth living when any day might restore to 
students some new treasure of lost wisdom, and when, 
moreover, each new discovery threw ever-increasing 
light upon those already made, and brought nearer and 
nearer the final victory over the old learning, which not 
seldom employed its crabbed and debased Latin in 
investigating by hopeless logical methods a variety of 
questions which had better have been left alone. Know- 
ledge now showed herself once more enrobed in beauty ; 
accordingly the time was one of progress such as it is 
hard for us even to imagine. 

Of course the knowledge of Latin writers had never 
thoroughly died out in mediaeval Europe. Monks had 
, ^ , . cultivated their domains according to the 

Enthusiasm . ° 

for Latin preccpts of the Roman writers on agriculture, 

authors.^ At a very early date Vergil and Horace, 

Colet, More. ^-^^ Statius and Ovid, were read in German 
schools ; and at home we have only to look through a 
few pages of Chaucer to see his familiarity with these 
poets. Infinite pains were every now and then employed 
in ransacking libraries for manuscripts of the great Latin 
authors ; in this way the celebrated Poggio Bracciolini, 
while attending the Council of Constance in 141 5, dis- 
covered at the monastery of St. Gall, covered with filth 
and rubbish and on the point of perishing from age and 
neglect, what turned out to be a complete copy of 
Quintilian and another of the greater part of Valerius 
Flaccus's ' Argonautica.' The same distinguished book- 
finder afterwards lighted upon the last twelve comedies of 



-1509 .The Revival of Classical Learning. 81 

Plautus, and Cicero's Verrine orations, De Oratore, and 
Brutus ; others of Cicero's orations had been discovered 
about a century before. After adding a MS. of Lucretius 
to his discoveries, Poggio sought with the utmost anxiety, 
but in vain, for the works of Tacitus. These were not 
discovered till nearly a hundred years later, when a 
copy of the ' Histories ' came to hand in Germany, and 
was presented to Pope Leo X. Most passionate of all 
was the longing to discover the lost works of Livy. A 
monk assured Poggio that he had seen a copy in the 
Cistercian monastery of Sora ; but all enquiries for it 
were in vain, and the blank still remains unsupplied, 
except as regards about thirty books. The enthusiasm 
for classical works was in proportion to their rarity. 
Alfonso of Ai^agon, King of Naples, refused, even when 
engaged in a campaign, to miss his daily lecture on Livy, 
and is said to have been cured of a severe illness by 
the delight of hearing Ouintus Curtius read. Even at an 
earlier date Giovanni di Ravenna, a pupil of Petrarca, 
knew by heart all the classics which had been discovered 
up to his time. Nor had Petrarca himself been far behind 
on this point ; for he tells us that in the course of a walk 
he went over in his own mind the whole works of Vergil, 
Orosius, Pliny, Mela, and Claudian, in order to remember 
all that these authors had said about the position of 
' Ultima Thule.' Indeed this great man, who is reverenced 
as the father of Italian patriotism, may also be said to 
have done more than any other single person in restoring 
scholarship, and that more than a century before the times 
of the great Renaissance. From him the enthusiasm for 
these pursuits spread very widely in Italy, and even strongly 
affected pohtics, inasmuch as Rienzi's rebellion against the 
Papal power in 1347 was an attempt to set up once more in 
Rome the authority of the ' Senatus Populusque Romanus, 

G 



82 The Early Tudors. 1485- 

and was entirely founded on classical ideas, thus gaining 
Petrarca's strongest sympathy. Yet even the enthusiasm 
of this period was slight in comparison with that of the 
later time when Greek teachers and Greek books came 
at last to exhibit ancient thought, not in the form which 
Roman eclecticism had given it, but in its simple and 
native beauty. The more advanced knowledge of Greek 
began with Manuel Chrysoloras. This eminent man 
came to Venice about 1390 to entreat help against the 
Turks who were already threatening Constantinople ; 
when his embassy was over, he was persuaded to return 
and settle at Florence as professor of his native language. 
In 1422 Francesco Filelfo, Chrysoloras' son-in-law, and 
two other Italians, Guarino and Aurispa, were despatched 
to Constantinople to collect books. Guarino was ship- 
wrecked on his return, and one of two valuable cases 
of MSS. went down with the vessel — a disaster which is 
said to have turned his hair completely white, though he 
was hardly twenty years old. Aurispa, more fortunate, 
arrived at Venice in the next year, bringing 238 precious 
volumes, among which were the works of Plato, Lucian, 
Xenophon, Diodorus, Arrian, Strabo, Callimachus, and 
Pindar. Filelfo himself remained abroad till 1427, and 
then returned to become the master of Greek learning in 
his native country. After him a succession of magnificent 
scholars maintained in this new field the honour of Italy. 
When Flenry VII. came to the throne, the celebrated 
Politian (so named from his birth-place, the Tuscan 
Montepulciano — ^his family name being Ambrogini) was 
thirty years old, and had greatly distinguished himself 
by his knowledge of the classical authors and of Roman 
laws. Contemporary with him were Marsilio Ficino 
the translator of Plato, and Pico di Mirandola, who 
before his death at the age of thirty-one had studied 



-1509 - The Revival of Classical Learning. 83 

Jewish literature with the most unwearied industry, 
was planning a gigantic ' Defence of Christianity ' to be 
founded upon it, and lived in hope of being allowed to 
preach this doctrine, going from town to town barefooted 
with crucifix in hand. At this point began the con- 
nection of English scholars with Italian learning, in- 
asmuch as William Grocyn, after having been for some 
time Greek professor at Oxford, spent two years (some- 
where between 1485 and 1491) at Florence, attending the 
lectures of Politian and Chalcondylas ; and about the 
same time the celebrated Linacre, afterwards founder of 
the College of Physicians, was selected because of the 
elegance and modesty of his manners as the associate 
in study of Lorenzo de' Medici's children. On their 
return, these heroes of learning communicated their own 
ardour to kindred spirits in England, above all to Colet, 
afterwards Dean of St. Paul's (who himself spent some 
time in Italy), and to Sir Thomas More. What rank 
was held by these last in the republic of letters we can in 
some degree judge from the account of them given by 
Erasmus, who on coming to Oxford in 1498 to study Greek 
there, declares that ' to be in company with such men 
as Colet he would not refuse to live even in Scythia.' 
' When I hear my friend Colet,' he says on another 
occasion, ' it is like listening to Plato himself. In Grocyn 
who does not admire the wide range of his knowledge ? 
What could be more searching, deep, and refined than 
the judgment of Linacre ? And when did nature ever 
mould a character more gentle, endearing, and happy 
than Thomas More ? ' We may judge, too, of the bold- 
ness with which literary research was then pursued by the 
recorded fact that Grocyn, after giving at St. Paul's the 
one or two first lectures of a course on the ' Celestial 
Hierarchies,' which were supposed till then to have been 



84 TJie Early Tic dors. 1485- 

written by Dionysius the Areopagite, the disciple of St. 
Paul, suddenly announced to the astonished audience 
that continued study had made him absolutely disbelieve 
the genuineness of this book, and that the course was 
therefore at an end. No such bold assertion had been 
made since Lorenzo Valla had dared to prove the letter 
of Abgarus to our Lord and the ' Donation of Constan- 
tine ' to be forgeries ; and in uttering it Grocyn may be 
said to have inaugurated that English love of truth in 
matters of knowledge and science which has borne ever 
since then such noble fruits among us. Thus classical 
literature soon became in England a pursuit most gen- 
erous and inspiring ; never getting pedantic as in Italy, 
where men quarrelled almost to the death on the small- 
est matters of philology, and on such questions as whether 
Lucius and Arruntius were sons or grandsons of Tar- 
quinius Priscus. Still less was there ever in England 
any of the strange longing for heathenism which ap- 
peared every now and then in Italy ; as when Pomponius 
Lastus raised an altar to Romulus, and imitated in private 
the worship described by Ovid. Nor were Englishmen 
ever inclined to heathenise Cln-istianity by classicising 
the language of the Bible, as when an Italian expressed 
' God the Father ' by ' nimborum Pater imbripotens,' the 
Holy Ghost by ' caelestis Zephyrus,' and the Eucharist by 
' sinceram Cererem.' Far different were the thoughts 
which occupied such men as More, Colet, Grocyn, and 
Erasmus. We find More, for instance, lecturing at St. 
Lawrence Church in the Old Jewry on the ' Civitate Dei ' 
of Augustine (that is, on the ways of God to man) — ' a 
very singular occupation,' remarks Sir James Mackintosh, 
' for a young lawyer.' His house was, according to Eras- 
mus, ' a school and exercise of the Christian religion ; all 
its inhabitants, male and female, applied their leisure to 



-1509 . The Revival of Classical Learning. 85 

liberal studies and profitable reading, though piety was 
their principal care.' From purely classical work More 
was debarred in later life both by his civil employments 
and by the practical turn of his mind ; what his taste in 
such matters was we may guess from his sending to his 
imaginary l^tc pia ' a pretty fardel of books ' containing 
' the most part of Plato's works, some of Aristotle's, and 
Theophrastus on Plants.' ' Of the poets,' he continues, 
' they have Aristophanes, Homer, Euripides, and Sopho- 
cles, in Aldus small print ; of the historians Thucydides, 
Herodotus, and Herodian. They set great store by Plu- 
tarch's books, and are delighted with Lucian's merry 
conceits and jests.' Learning like this had been thor- 
oughly transfused into More's mind, and had in a man- 
ner become his very self; instead of merely quoting 
Plato, he tried to think as Plato would have thought if 
placed among the exigencies of modern life. In the 
same manner Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, looked upon all 
classical acquirement as valuable mainly from its power 
of ordering the mind for thought-purposes, and raising it 
to the noblest objects. A theologian above all things, he 
loved chiefly to dwell on St. Paul's Epistles, the Gospel 
history, the Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. But 
all these subjects were animated by him with the new spirit 
which springs from a liberal education. He delighted, 
as Mr. Seebohm says, to trace in St. Paul's Epistles the 
marks of the Apostle's character ; the ' vehemence of 
speaking ' which would not allow him to perfect his sen- 
tences ; the rare prudence with which he would temper 
his speech to meet the needs of the different classes by 
whom his epistle would be read ; his eager expectation 
soon to visit Spain, which, however, did not make him 
impatient when it was disappointed. Like Dr. Arnold in 
our own time, Colet would illustrate St. Paul by leference 



86 The Early Tudors. 1485- 

to the state of Roman society as described by Suetonius. 
In all these and many other ways the choicest results of 
scholarship were as thoroughly employed by him for re- 
ligious purposes as they were by More to bring about 
reforms in state administration. 

Unlike his two cherished friends, Erasmus was the 
scholar pure and simple, the man who had no occupation 
apart from his books ; moreover he was a 
E^ralmu^s^ thorough cosmopolite. Born in 1467 at Rot- 

terdam, he had as little of the typical Dutch- 
man in him as can well be imagined ; indeed, nothing was 
ever so intolerable to him (except, indeed, the monastic 
life at Stein, from which he had escaped in order to study 
at Paris) as the interminable feasts of his native country, 
and the utter disesteem in which learning was held 
there. From the terrible wretchedness to which his 
poverty condemned him at Paris he was rescued by 
Lord Mountjoy, who brought him for the first time to 
England in 1498, settling on him a small life pension. 
With this and the presents which he soon began to 
receive Erasmus contented himself; refusing the offer 
of a semi-royal pupil, James Stanley the King's step- 
brother, who was to be equipped with sufficient learning 
to allow of his being made Bishop of Ely when just out of 
his teens. Before the time of Erasmus's second visit to 
England in 1505 he had become confessedly the first 
classical scholar in Europe, and was well received by 
Archbishop Warham and by Bishop Fisher, who were both 
patrons of the new learning. Utterly rejecting any use 
whatever of modern languages, he had formed for him- 
self a Latin stjde of surpassing excellence, which seemed 
able, without departing from the old forms and struc- 
ture, to express all the ten thousand objects and cir- 
cumstances of modern life. He had in 1500 taken the 



-1509 .The Revival of Classical Learning. 87 

world by storm with his ' Adagia,' a work in which, after 
the fashion of Itahan pohticians, he grouped round a 
number of proverbs all the associated thoughts which 
he could remember in ancient writings. As speci- 
mens of these may be mentioned two on which he 
was for ever harping — ' nil monacho indoctius ' and 
' dulce bellum inexpertis ; ' his bitter hatred for the old 
life at Stein was brought out in the first, his deep grief 
at the devastation of Italy in the second. It is striking 
to find that, amid the manifold hardships of his third 
journey to England (which immediately followed the 
accession of Henry VIIL), the terrible weather through 
which he rode, and the filth and rudeness of the road- 
side inns, he could quietly occupy himself in planning 
his wonderfully witty ' Encomium Moriae ' (the Praise of 
Folly), in which he most impartially satirizes bookworms, 
grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, schoolmen, pilgrims, 
pardoners, schoolmasters, ' sportsmen, monks, courtiers, 
princes, kings, and even the Pope himself. His 
' Colloquia ' are still more admirable from the brightness 
of their style and their beautiful description of religion 
working amidst all the various circumstances and acci- 
dents of common life. In reading them we are perpetually 
reminded of Socrates's gentle and kindly persuasiveness 
as described by Xenophon ; for, like the Athenian philo- 
sopher, he is occupied in showing how youth can be 
delightful and gracious, how old age and death may be 
disarmed of all their terrors, and how a simple heart void 
of superstition is able to bear up against even the ex- 
tremest hardship and danger. Above all, there stands 
out in this, as in all his writings, a heartfelt admiration 
for the simple life of a kindly household ; like Luther, 
he is never weary of contrasting this with the so-called 
religious life of monasteries. Even apart from the cor- 



88 The Early Tudors. 1485- 

ruptions found iil the cloister, he is firmly persuaded 
that those who adopt such a life choose not the better 
but the worse part.. Strongly, indeed, were these ad- 
mirable works calculated to influence England, where, 
indeed, more than one of them were written ; in point of 
fact, their author seemed at one time likely to stamp the 
age with the mark of his own moderation, thoughtfulness, 
and humanity. In the course of the subsequent history 
we shall see what he thought of the wars which were 
soon to disappoint his best hopes, and what farther con- 
tributions he was in spite of them to make to the welfare 
of both Church and State in England. 

The question now occurred to thinking minds by 
what educational institutions there would be the best 
chance of giving the rising generation a firm hold on 
the new learning ; and new and noble foundations for 
this purpose soon came into existence. Richard Fox, 
who had distinguished himself while Bishop 
Coiie°es^for of Durham in repelling Scottish invasions, 
the New afterwards, when Bishop of Winchester, 

Learnmg. '^ ' 

founded the grammar schools of Grantham 
and Taunton. At Oxford he had thought of erecting 
a monastery, but was dissuaded by Oldham Bishop of 
Exeter, who with remarkable foresight enquired, ' Would 
it not be better for us to provide for the increase of learn- 
ing, and for such as shall do good to the Church and 
Commonwealth, rather than build houses and provide 
livelihood for monks, whose end and fall we may live to 
see?' Accordingly Bishop Fox founded Corpus Christi 
College, the statutes of which strongly enjoined the Fel- 
lows to pursue the new learning. The professor of Latin 
then was particularly ordered to extirpate barbarism — 
that is, monkish Latin (' ut barbariem a nostro alveario 
exstirpet '), and the Greek professor was to read and explain 



-1509 - New Colleges mid Schools. 89 

all the best writers in that language. Benefits of the same 
kind had been conferred on Cambridge by the munificence 
of the Lady Margaret. Herself a person of simple and 
uncritical piety, and as disinclined as possible to go in 
search of new things, she was nevertheless so thoroughly 
under the influence of Bishop Fisher, her chaplain and 
confessor, that she was induced to erect Christ's and St. 
John's Colleges in that university, in the interest of the 
newer studies. Both of these were old institutions much 
decayed ; she gave them suitable buildings, and provided 
for the Masters, Fellows, and Scholars incomes, not 
splendid according to our notions, but such as would sup- 
ply the low living which was then thought to lead to high 
thinking. Of Christ's College, which alone was com- 
pleted in her lifetime, she made Fisher the Visitor, thus 
securing that its members should live up to their founder's 
idea. The Fellows were to have an annual stipend of 
1 3 J. \d. to 165'. %d., according to their degrees ; with one 
shilling a week for commons, and 13.T. i^d. a year for their 
' livery,' which was to be of cloth of one colour bought at 
the celebrated national emporium of Stourbridge Fair. 
In all elections the poorer candidate was to be preferred ; 
any one who had a private income of 10/. was ineligible 
for a fellowship. Dogs or hawks were forbidden in 
college ; cards and dice were to be played only in hall 
at Christmas-time, when other jurisdictions were for the 
time superseded by that of the ' Rex Natalitius ' or King 
of Nowell. What precisely was meant by secular (that 
is non-monastic) education in those days we are quite 
clearly informed in the detailed accounts which remain 
of the foundation of St. Paul's School in 15 10 by Dean 
Colet. This was to contain 153 boys (the number being 
taken from that of the fish in St. John xxi.), and to 
be taught ' the old Latin speech, the very Roman tongue 



go The Early Tudor s. 1485- 

used in the time of TuUy and Sallust and Vergil and 
Terence ; the Latin adulterate, which blind fools brought 
into the world, being absolutely banished.' They were 
also to learn Greek, ' if such can be gotten ' — a cautiously 
worded injunction, and probably meant to avoid exciting 
suspicion against the school as teaching the language of 
heresy. Colet commissioned the learned Linacre to draw 
up a Latin grammar to be used at St. Paul's ; but when 
it was done thought it too long and involved for his 
' little beginners.' The first Headmaster was William 
Lilly, the godson of Grocyn and friend of More ; he had 
learned Latin in Italy and had lived for years at Rhodes 
to perfect himself in Greek. In the opinion of Erasmus 
(who thought a teacher as important to the common- 
wealth as a bishop), Lilly was a thorough master in 
the art of educating youth ; which meant, as another 
letter of Erasmus shows, that, among other qualifica- 
tions, he had studied Plato and Aristotle among philo- 
sophers ; among poets. Homer and Ovid ; in geography, 
Mela, Ptolemy, Phny, Strabo. ' The teacher,' Erasmus 
continues, ' should be able to trace the origin of words, 
and their gradual corruption in the languages of Constan- 
tinople, Italy, Spain, and France. He should know the 
ancient names of trees, animals, instruments, clothes, 
and gems, with regard to which it is incredible how 
ignorant even educated men are. ... I want the teacher 
to have traversed the whole field of knowledge, that he 
may spare each of his scholars doing it.' The good Dean 
of St. Paul's, though unwilling to give up the stimulus 
to learning which corporal punishment affords, was yet 
vehement against the tyrants who thought that only by 
flogging could boys' unruly spirits be tamed. Doubtless 
there was room for change in this point, when it was 



-1509 - Liieralure of the Time. 91 

undergraduate of Christ's College, Cambridge, under the 
Lady Margaret's window — she not interfering except by 
calling ' Lente, lente ; ' and when little boys used to 
be whipped in the presence of guests during dinner, 
not because they had done anything wrong, but because 
they might. Finally, instead of appointing ecclesiastics 
as Visitors of St. Paul's School, Colet placed it under ' the 
most honest and faithful fellowship of the Mercers of 
London ' — ' under married citizens of established reputa- 
tion,' as Erasmus puts it. Among all men to whom life 
had introduced him, the Dean had found he said, least 
corruption in these. 

Few people at this time contributed more to the spread 
of literature than the printers ; whose business was 
then held to include the correction of the press, as 
it was not usual to send proof-sheets to the author or 
editor. Hence the heads of such establishments as that 
of the Frobens at Basle, the Aldi at Venice, the Etiennes 
at Paris, required to be, and actually were, men of great 
learning, who took care to have their sons specially edu- 
cated in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew for the pur- _ . 

^ Printers. 

poses of their business. In the workshop of Wynkyn 
the Frobens it is said that every one, composi- Poetry of' 
tors and all, used Greek as their daily Ian- ^^^ "™^- 
guage. Though not quite up, as regards printing, to the 
standard of Italy, France, or Switzerland, England still 
was faithful to the noble tradition of Caxton ; Wynkyn de 
Worde, who had been Caxton's assistant, having printed 
not less than sixty-six works between 1510 and 1520. 
This is not to be taken as indicating that English writers 
were then numerous ; on the contrary, hardly any time in 
our history has added so little to our literature as that of 
Henry VII. and his son. England was then going to 
school and gathering materials for future effort. Our polite 



92 The Early Tudor s. 1485- 

literature for this period is represented almost entirely by 
Barklay's ' Ship of Fooles,' printed by Wynkyn de Worde 
in 1508. Even this was an adapted translation from a 
German work ; the author, however, has some personal 
touches, as when he confesses that he himself is like other 
clerks, who so ' frowardly them guide,' that when once they 
have got promotion they give up all study. To be made 
' parson of Honington or Clist,' it is required, he intimates, 
to be skilful rather in flattery and field-sports than in 
divinity. Yet he seems to show this self-blame is more or 
less ironical, as in another place he speaks of the delight 
of having many books always in hand, and binding them 
handsomely in ' damas, satten, or else in velvet pure.' 
Hawes's ' Pastime of Pleasure ' came from the same press 
in 1 517, having been finished in 1506. In contrast to its 
title this poem, which is dedicated to Henry VII., is a 
moral and learned allegory, in which the seven sciences 
and a host of virtues are personified, something in 
Bunyan's manner, though without his raciness. It is 
characteristic of the time that Hawes's ' Pilgrim ' chooses 
the way of active rather than of contemplative life, while 
he also equips himself with all known sciences as the 
right preparation for a chivalrous career, especially with 
that lore of the stars 'in which God himself is chief 
astronomer.' For it is precisely this mixture of learning 
with energetic action which made the best men of the 
period what they were. 

A few shorter poems belong to this time, and were 
more influential by far than anything in Barklay or 
Hawes. Among these was the ballad of the ' Nut-brown 
Maid,' which appeared for the first time in 1502 in 
Arnold's book on London customs. ' A Lytel Geste 
of Robin Hood ' was published by Wynkyn de Worde 
in 1489, and established on a firm basis the repu- 



-1 509 - Literature of the Time. 93 

tation of this popular hero, ever ready to support the 
weak against the strong. Above all should it be remarked 
that the oldest known copy of the noble ' Chevy Chase ' 
is thought to date from the year 1500, and is self-evi- 
dently much nearer the original than the later forms of 
the ballad. 

The native prose works most honourable to England at 
this time are, of course, those of Sir Thomas More ; whose 
style has indeed the fault (common to him 
with Erasmus) of inordinately long para- peHod° ' ^ 
graphs, yet leaves little to be desired in the way ^u^ ■ . 
of clearness. His ' History of Edward V.' was 
written about 1506 (though not published till 15 13). It is 
in the classical style, with speeches for the principal char- 
acters. But his reputation will always rest on his ' Utopia,' 
published in its Latin form in 1515. Indeed, this deserves 
to rank as a masterpiece beside the works of Philippe 
de Commines and of More's contemporary Macchiavelli, 
but far beyond either in right-mindedness and reforming 
enthusiasm. Its arguments are supposed to be those of 
a companion of the traveller Amerigo Vespucci, named 
Raphael Hythloday, who has discovered and describes at 
Cardinal Morton's table the notable island of ' Nowhere,' 
whose inhabitants are models of practical wisdom. 
Strong in the experience thence derived, the travelled 
man finds fault with many things in England. A good 
specimen of his charges against our institutions is his 
declaration that in other countries of Europe there is 
trouble from disbanded soldiers who like robbery better 
than work, but that English thieves are not gener- 
ally soldiers. The high price of wool tempts landlords to 
throw into large walks for sheep, inhabited only by the 
shepherd and his dog, those estates which had maintained 
many small farm-houses ; thus the old tenants are driven 



94 The Early Tudors. 1485- 

away.'and when their small means are spent, they can 
but steal and be hanged for it. We shall see in a subse- 
quent chapter that the English Parliament had already 
made one law to remedy this state of things, and was to 
make many more ; nor can it be doubted that the country 
benefited much by the changes thus introduced. 

In this and many other ways the rule of common sense 
had now begun in England, and found support and en- 
couragement in more than one influential 
Morton and quarter. Cardinal Morton cast his weight into 
Reform. ^'^^^ ?>c3le ; indeed, his life had been so full of 

accident and change, that it would have been 
strange if he had not had a practical turn. Narrowly 
escaping from the rout of Towton in 1461, he had 
weathered — Lancastrian as he was — the dangerous reigns 
of Edward IV. and Richard III. ; his persuasive power 
had induced the Duke of Buckingham to rebel in 1483, 
and, as we have seen, he had warned Henry Tudor of 
Landois's plots against him. After Bosworth Field his 
attainder was reversed, and in March i486 he became 
Chancellor of England. A few days after this Archbishop 
Bouchier died, and it soon appeared that Morton was to 
succeed him. If the new Archbishop could have simply 
followed his own tendencies, reform in the Church might 
have gone far in his hands. As it was, he was over- 
anxious to concihate the Popes of his time, and thus to 
obtain their help in establishing the despotic power of 
the Crown. The consequence was that his reforms, 
though in the right direction, were far less vigorous than 
they should have been. He insisted that all rectors 
should reside in their benefices, and in each benefice in 
turn if they were pluralists ; and procured an Act of Par- 
liament to punish ' incontinent ' clergy, that is, those who 
lived in quasi-marriage. With a naive reliance on the 



-1509 • Cardinal Morton. 95 

effect of strictness in externals, he expresses great dismay 
at the clergy having given up the tonsure and the clerical 
dress ; insists that they shall be shorn so as to show their 
ears and wear coats ' clausas a parte anterior! ' ; that only 
graduates of the university shall have fur on their gar- 
ments, and that no swords or daggers shall be carried by 
priests. As to the monasteries, which required even 
more correction, though he procured from Pope Innocent 
VIII. a bill authorising him to carry out reforms there, 
he still exercised this power with preposterous lenity, as 
the celebrated case of the Abbey of St. Albans is enough 
to show. Here the Abbot was charged with offences 
enough to fill a ' chronique scandaleuse ' ; in particular 
with promoting ladies to high conventual offices for 
reasons as opposite as possible to those which should 
have guided his choice. Yet this libertine was not de- 
graded from his post of responsibility ; it was held 
sufficient to warn him that the Rule of St. Benedict must 
be restored at St. Albans within thirty days under pain of 
severer animadversion. Probably the moral and religious 
effect of the Cardinal's visitations would have been greater 
if he had not sometimes been attended by Royal Com- 
missioners for the purpose of raismg benevolences ; whose 
zeal he was unlikely, as we have already seen, to think 
of mitigating. In his judgments as Chancellor he occa- 
sionally carried the notion of common sense and equity 
somewhat beyond the ideas of Westminster Hall ; now 
and then maintaining that what the law of God ordains 
must be the law of England, and still more extra-legally 
threatening a dishonest executor ' qu'il serait dampne en 
helle.' 

At any rate, no reserve, no love of despotism or fear of 
touching abuses in Church or State, hindered Erasmus 
from the loudest and most unmistakable remonstrances 



96 The Early Tiidots. 1485- 

against religious corruption. The superstitions connected 
with pilgrimages, relics, and alleged miracles 
piigrhli'a.'es appeared to him in a very different light 
from that in which even Sir Thomas More 
viewed them at a later time, when he maintained that 
no one who had the ordinary intelligence required for 
a juryman could doubt the working of miracles at the 
great centres of devotion. By way of sapping such beliefs 
at their base, Erasmus wrote his celebrated ' Colloquy on 
Pilgrimages ; ' in which, with ultra-Aristophanic humour, 
he makes the saints in heaven address a letter to Luther, 
thanking him for teaching that they are not to be invoked, 
and thus freeing them from a thousand importunities. He 
then goes on quaintly to describe the old-fashioned 
Ogygius making toilsome expeditions to Compostella and 
elsewhere, ' to fulfil a vow made by his mother-in-law ' in 
view of a happy event in his family. Next he tells of the 
little postern at the Abbey of Walsingham to which a 
knight once fled, but finding it shut, prayed to the Virgin 
Mary, and was instantly on the other side of it, horse and 
all ; and of the authentic tablet guaranteeing the genuine- 
ness of all the relics in the place, but put up much too high 
to be read. The ' Colloquy ' proceeds to describe a visit 
to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, which the 
author made in company with Dean Colet. As the friends 
brought a recommendation from Archbishop Warham, 
they could ask a few sceptical questions with less danger 
of being considered sacrilegious heretics than they would 
have incurred elsewhere. Erasmus describes the beauty 
of the two towers, which seem to salute pilgrims from 
afar ; the sculptured figures of Becket's murderers (who, 
he says, are locally called Tuscus, Fuscus, and Berrius) ; 
the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus fastened to one of 
the pillars ; the disgusting relics which they had to kiss, 



-1509 ■ Erasmus as a Reformer. 97 

till Colet's patience failed him at the sight of an arm 'lo 
which the flesh was still adhering. Presently Colet began 
questioning the sacristan. ' Was not St. Thomas in his 
lifetime a very charitable person?' 'Certainly.' 'And 
whatever virtues he had in this world, ought we not to 
suppose that he now has the same in a much higher de- 
gree ? ' 'Of course.' ' Well then, if he was as liberal as 
you say towards the poor, may I ask your opinion on this 
point ? Suppose he saw a poor widow with starving 
children, or with daughters whose modesty is in danger 
because they cannot be married for want of a dowry, do 
you not think that he might perhaps wish some of the 
immense mass of wealth collected in his shrine to 
be expended for the relief of such necessities ? ' To this 
sacrilegious question no answer was made except looks 
of horror ; and the friends were handed over to the 
guidance of the Prior himself, who showed them first the 
jewels sent by various crowned heads to the shrine, and 
then some personal relics of the saint of a kind perhaps 
hardly describable. Here Colet's disgust became so 
manifest, that the Prior thought it better to change the 
current of his reflections by ordering some wine for the 
highly-recommended visitors. It certainly is a striking 
proof of the respect for learning in these times that Erasmus 
should have been able with impunity to write such scath- 
ing satires on the practices of the Church. Had he not 
been the best Latin scholar in the world, he would not 
have dared on other occasions to treat the notion of 
Indulgences for forty days as an absurdity, on the ground 
that there are no days and nights in the other world, or 
to fling continued charges of immorality at the monastic 
bodies, or to declare that the man who looks after his 
workmen and cares for the welfare of his wife and daugh- 
ters is doing better than if he visited all the ' stations ' at 



98 The Early Tudors. 1485- 

Rome and made a prayer at each. And when we con- 
sider the immense popularity of his works, we see clearly 
how much doubt as to the doctrines and practices of the 
Church must have lived on from Lollard days, to gain 
force and cohesion from the utterances of his genius. 
Had he done no more than to give this doubt words, 
his work would have still been important. As it was, it 
rose much higher, and tended to simplify and ennoble 
religion far beyond what his contemporaries could con- 
ceive as possible. For he deprecated the practice of 
developing doctrines into all their logical consequences 
and thus turning religion into dogma ; he explained 
Christian faith as one with the Christian life in a way 
which Luther would have thought half heathen ; and he 
was by no means anxious for rapid and violent reforms, 
believing as he did that false notions of religion would be 
more wholesomely corrected by the slow advance of 
sound knowledge. ' The Reformation that has been,' 
says an eminent writer, ' is Luther's monument ; perhaps 
the Reformation that is to be will trace itself back to 
Erasmus.' 

This chapter may properly end by noticing the archi- 
tecture of Henry VII. 's reign. The time produced several 
great constructors. Cardinal Morton nearly rebuilt his 
residences at Maidstone, Addington, and Charing, as 
well as what is now the old part of Hatfield House. 
His arms appear several times on the fine 
&c. of the tower of Wisbeach Church, which he proba- 

peno . i^^y restored. He promoted the building of 

Rochester Bridge, obtaining for this and for other works 
which he was executing the power of impressing stone- 
masons ; and also proclaiming that those who gave money 
for it should have forty days' remission of Purgatory. At 
Oxford he contributed to the restoration of the Divinity 



-1 509 • Buildings of the Period. 99 

School and of St. Mary's Church. At Canterbury the 
building of the ' Angel Steeple ' is ascribed to him. 
WMle Bishop of Ely, Morton had also distinguished him- 
self as an engineer by executing the great cut or drain 
through the fens from Wisbeach to Peterborough which 
is still called ' Morton's Leame.' The people in the 
neighbourhood of these towns had complained that the 
river Nene and the ancient works connected with it were 
no longer able to carry the fen waters to the sea, and that 
after rain the flood destroyed its banks and drowned the 
fields. The Bishop, having long lived in the Nether- 
lands, had thoroughly observed the management of 
waters there, and had no need to call in Dutch profes- 
sional men — in fact, the Leame was executed under his 
own superintendence, and it justified his claim to be called 
the ' earliest of modern engineers ' in England by at once 
bringing more than 4,000 acres into cultivation, and by 
serving up to the year 1725 as the great outlet to the river. 
Henry VII. himself left several stately monuments of 
his reign. One of these was the Palace of Sheen, a small 
fragment of which still remains at Richmond in Surrey. 
It contained a noble hall one hundred feet long by forty 
wide ; and its very appearance, with its numerous towers 
and fronts all pierced with large windows, must have told 
clearly of a positive delight in the feeling that security 
was at length established — ' fair houses,' says Lord Bacon, 
' being so full of glass that one cannot tell where to come 
to be out of the sun or cold.' An important feature of 
this building was that, besides the great hall, it contained 
a private dining-room for the King, and another for the 
Queen. This was a new and growing fashion ; in large 
mansions of this period the lord's dining-room was often 
separated by a partition from the hall, or in some cases 
built over it ; in smaller houses the hall was dispensed 

LofC. 



loo The Early Tudor s. 1485- 

with altogether. The change was not made without ad- 
monitions against it from high quarters ; even down to 
PUizabeth's time government used every now and then 
to renew Grostete's old exhortation, which said, ' As much 
as ye can without peril of sickness or weariness, eat ye 
in the hall before your meyny ; for that shall be for 
your profit and worship.' Now, however, nobles and 
gentry were getting too fastidious for this, ' much de- 
lighting and using to dine in corners and secret places ;' 
such retreats also contributed much to the growth of 
luxury by being furnished better than rooms were in 
earlier times, and more after the fashion long established 
in the Netherlands. 

Henry VII. 's Chapel in Westminster Abbey is the chief 
ecclesiastical monument of the period. It was built under 
the King's personal superintendence, the first stone being 
laid in 1503. His intention was to honour the burial- 
place of his ancestress Katherine of France and of 
Henry VI., and also to provide a splendid tomb in 
it for himself and Elizabeth. Externally the chapel is re- 
markable for the beauty of its octagonal turret-buttresses, 
and of the carved flying buttresses which pass from them 
to support the clerestory. Every stone in the building, 
except those of the few lowest courses, is profusely 
ornamented either with foliage of great beauty or with 
heraldic devices. The roof within is a magnificent speci- 
men of the later English fan-tracery vaulting ; many of 
the fans form unsupported pendants from the roof, and the 
whole is most richly ornamented. This kind of work has 
been sometimes spoken of as ' debased ' by its fondness 
for superfluous ornament ; it is therefore satisfactory to find 
that it has been most heartily admired by Viollet le Due, 
the chief of modern French architects, who considers it 
both richer and more scientific than any kind of vaulting 



-1509 Peaceful Beginnings of the new Reign. 101 

known to the builders of his own country. To the right 
of the south aisle stands the magnificent tomb of Henry 
and Elizabeth, the work of the celebrated Pietro Torre- 
giano ; and also that of the Lady Margaret. Here Henry 
ordered that prayers for his soul and for the remission 
of his sins should go on ' as long as the world lasted.' 
To ensure their maintenance, he gave the Dean more 
than 5,000/. for the purchase of manors, besides advowsons 
producing more than 450/. a year ; the uses, however, to 
which this income was to be applied were so strictly de- 
fined as not to leave much margin of profit. The new 
building was on the site of the old Lady-chapel ; besides 
which, the ground was cleared of St. Erasmus Chapel (the 
work of Elizabeth Wydvile), of a tavern called the ' White 
Rose,' and probably of a house once inhabited by the 
poet Chaucer. The stone, like that of the modern houses 
of Parliament, was brought from Yorkshire at great 
expense ; yet it did not justify the selection, as, unlike 
that of some great mediaeval cathedrals, which is as fresh 
now as when put up, it required to be renewed after about 
300 years. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

THE PEACEFUL BEGINNINGS OF THE NEW REIGN. 
I 509-1 511. 

With the accession of Henry VIII. new prospects began 

for England. The country, which had been scantly 

grateful for the economy and homely ways 

by which the late King had gone far to repair fond of the 

the waste of the Civil Wars, now felt a 

bounding joy at seeing its own mental power, hearti- 



I02 The Early Tudors. 1509 

ness, bravery, and magnificence visibly presented in the 
person of an eighteen-years-old sovereign. What a 
change from the timorous invahd whom they had just lost 
to the splendid youth now before them, with his glowing 
complexion and short-cropped golden hair, whose beauty 
grave ambassadors described in their despatches home, 
who could speak French, Italian, and Spanish, played 
and sang to admiration, and composed music which a 
high authority describes as ' not too clear or masterly 
to have been really the work of a royal dilettante ! ' And 
this accomplished person could also overthrow knight 
after knight in the lists, and tire out half-a-dozen ' second 
horses ' carefully stationed for him along the probable line 
of the hunt ; he also liked well to stake his hundreds like 
a man at the gaming-table, and his bonhomie was such 
that he would on great holidays every now and then en- 
courage the lieges to scramble for the ornaments on 
his own dress and that of his courtiers. It seemed little 
that he had not been trained in political or economic 
knowledge : this would come in time, and mean- 
while he was not worse off than many of his brother 
sovereigns. For the master interests of the period he 
might probably do much ; the classicists might expect 
everything from one who at nine years old had written 
good Latin uncorrected by tutors, the Church re- 
formers from a prince with so strong a turn for theology. 
Was there danger that the fatal passion for war and 
glory might some time engross his mind and overthrow 
all this fair promise ? This was of course possible : yet 
so far as the beginnings of such feeling could yet be dis- 
cerned, it took the form which has always been most 
justly popular in England, that of naval rather than 
military enterprise. Instead of schemes for reconquering 
the French dominion lost by Henry VI., and thus letting 



1 509 Peaceful Beginnings of the new Reign. 103 

loose among his people the frantic passion for plunder 
which would be the bane of industry, he was mainly- 
bent on making his fleet effective for the defence of 
his own shores. He would himself show foreigners 
over the ' Great Harry,' his new and magnificent man- 
of-war, with her seven tiers of guns one over another. 
His admirals never feared that he would weary over the 
details in their letters — how 'for the whole of Palm 
Sunday we stirred not, for the wind was E by S, which 
was the course we should draw ; but on Monday it came 
W.S.W., which was very good for us, and that night we 
slept it not, for at the beginning of the flood we were all 
under sail, when the Katherine Fortaliza sailed very well. 
Your good ship the Sovereign is the flower of all vessels 
that ever sailed. My letter is long, but your High- 
ness did command me to send word how every ship 
worked.' When the days of war began, the same writer, 
Lord Edward Howard, tells his master, with the cheer- 
fulness of a Nelson or Collingwood, that he 'expects a 
fight within five or six days, as he hears that a hundred 
sail are coming towards them ; ' or bids him by no means 
doubt that 'the first wind that ever cometh, the enemy 
shall have broken heads that all the world shall hear of it.' 
Thus protected, England could have nothing to fear from 
without, and might therefore have continued to isolate 
herself, without loss or damage of any kind, from the im- 
broglios of foreign politics, with quite sufficient occupa- 
tion for all her energies in the problems of internal gov- 
ernment and the enterprises which belong to peace. 
Even before Henry Vll. was buried, his ^ 

. . Execution 

tyrannical mmisters Empson and Dudley of Empson 
were dealt with much as Olivier le Dain had ^" " ^^' 
been on the accession of Charles VIll. of France. In 
order to hinder their being included in the general pardon 



I04 The Early Ttedors, 1509 

at the accession, they were summoned to appear before 
the Privy Council, and articles were at once prepared 
against them stating in general terms the financial 
oppressions of which they had been guilty. Their plea 
of having acted according to existing laws was summarily 
put aside on the ground that they had misapplied the 
laws to which they appealed. While in the Tower they 
Avere farther accused of having plotted to seize and put 
to death the young King immediately on his father's 
decease. It was on this charge, for which no evidence 
exists, and which appears simply incredible, that Dudley 
was tried and condemned at the Guildhall and Empson 
at Northampton. Both remained in prison till August 
1 510, when a report that Katherine was interceding for 
them produced a shower of petitions that they might be 
executed. This Henry therefore ordered, acting, as Lord 
Bacon says, 'more like a good king than a good master.' 
Several of their inferior agents were either torn to pieces 
by the mob, or first pilloried in Cornhill and then thrown 
into Newgate to die of harsh treatment. We are told by 
Lord Herbert of Cherbury that Dudley sent a request to 
the Privy Council that ' my indictment may be entered on 
no record, nor divulged to foreign nations, lest if they 
hear in my condemnation all that may argue a final dis- 
solution in government, they invade and overcome you.' 
Such a mode of pleading was not likely to mollify Henry, 
yet Dudley's attainder was reversed some years after his 
death, and his family afterwards rose, as we have seen, to 
the highest rank and importance. 

Thus sternly was one great keynote of the 
wuh^'^^^ reign struck at its very outset; on June 7, 

KaAerine j 509, took place Henry's long-delayed wed- 

ding with his sister-in-law, in virtue of the 
dispensation obtained from Pope Juhus II. in 1503. Mar- 



1509 Peaceful Beginnings of the new Reign. 105 

riages between persons thus related were so completely 
understood to be forbidden by the actual words of the 
Bible, that under ordinary circumstances it would have 
been held that even the Pope would not grant dispensa- 
tion for it. It had, however, been declared that Kath- 
erinehadbeen Arthur's wife only in name ; and, as a visible 
symbol of this, Katherine was now married with her hair 
loose, after the fashion of virgin brides. The Privy 
Council, with the exception of Warham, were strongly 
in favour of the marriage, such objections as were raised 
having been answered by King Ferdinand's argument 
that the King of Portugal had married two sisters suc- 
cessively without bringing on himself any mark of divine 
anger. On her wedding day Katherine again signed 
away her dowry of 200,000 crowns (the difficulty of 
repaying which had been one of the arguments for the 
original dispensation), receiving in exchange for it lands 
and rents at Bristol, Bedford, Norwich, Ipswich, and 
about 150 other towns and parishes, with the right of 
receiving felons' goods, fines, waifs and strays, and treas- 
ure-trove on all manors granted her. 

On June 20 Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby 
died, full of years and honours, in the precincts of West- 
minster Abbey ; one of her last public acts was advising 
her grandson in his choice of privy-councillors. Of her 
two foundations at Cambridge already mentioned, she 
left Christ's College complete ; St. John's was 

* , ^ ,.-' , Death of the 

erected some years later accordmg to her Lady 
plans. A small but graceful memorial of her ^^^gare . 
taste still remains in the little Gothic canopy over St. 
Winifred's spring at Holywell in Flintshire, which is even 
now a place of Roman Catholic pilgrimage. Her divinity 
professorships at Oxford and Cambridge continue to bear 
her narne ; yet her chief and best m.emorial will always 



io6 The Early Tudor s. 1510 

be the record of her simphcity and nobleness, of the 
care she took that justice should be done to all her 
dependents, of her patronage of all kmds of learning, 
and of her deep and humble-minded affection to her son 
as King. 'To all the learned men of England,' says 
Bishop Fisher in her funeral sermon, ' she was a mother ; 
to all virtuous and devout persons a loving sister ; and to 
all the common people of the realm she was in their 
causes a common mediatrice, and took right great dis- 
pleasure for them.' The dream of her life had been a 
Crusade against the all-conquering Turks, in which she 
would have been content to join the defenders of the 
truth, and 'to help them by washing of their clothes.' 
This may be considered one of the last flashes of the 
genuine crusading spirit in England : henceforward our 
kings, though they did not, like those of France, ally 
themselves with the Porte, were not inclined to do more 
for Christianity in the East than was implied in a casual 
present to the monks of Mount Athos or an aid towards 
the redemption of illustrious prisoners at Constantinople. 
Henry's government at this time was not less deter- 
mined than his father's in preserving order at home, and 

repressing according to its lights some of the 
laws '^ '"^^^ chief influences against it. The Star Chamber 

was encouraged by him to strike at even the 
first nobles in the land; in 15 10 we find the Duke of 
Buckingham, in spite of his royal blood, pleading in vain 
before it for restoration to the office of High Constable. 
Men of less qua,lity were heavily fined for taking part in 
riots, as were also juries who acquitted them on such charges 
contrary to the evidence. Indeed the procedure in this court 
had now become so peremptory, that men of rank who 
knew themselves innocent still sometimes found it safer 
to submit and pray for pardon. As a farther effort in 



1 51 1 Peaceful Beginnings of the new Reign. 107 

behalf of public morality, the growing passion for games of 
chance was opposed in 1 511 by a tolerably strict statute, 
which reserved the pernicious pleasure of gambhng for 
gentlemen only, the commons being forbidden to play at 
dice or cards, and even at tennis or bowls, except at 
Christmas and under the eye of their superiors. When this 
law was re-enacted and completed in 1542, it gave power to 
justices to make raids on gambhng-houses and imprison 
their proprietors; it has remained in force till our own 
time, and recently enabled the police to break up the ' hells ' 
in St. James Street. Even ball-play in public places was 
prohibited by the earlier statute; this appears to have 
been a stroke aimed at the London apprentices and their 
games in Cheapside, alarming to staid citizens (the 
rudeness of which may have given the sting to Shake- 
speare's epithet, 'base foot-ball player'). As a substitute 
for such games, archery was to be zealously pursued, 
every man or boy between the age of seven and 
sixty being bound to practice the longbow, with its for- 
midable range of 220 yards (which the law did not allow 
to be diminished), and to discard all such new-fangled 
weapons as crossbows and hand-guns. Archery, in fact, 
was considered to supply just the mixture of exertion, 
courage, and intelligence which was good for Englishmen. 
It was also, as Ascham maintained a few years later, the 
kind of exercise most profitable for scholars ; and all the 
more so, as he quaintly says, 'because it was invented 
by Apollo the god of learning, whereas dice and such 
games were brought in by an ungracious god called 
Theuth, which for his naughtiness came never into other 
gods' company, so that Homer doth despise once to 
mention him in all his works.' 

The subject of ' benefit of clergy ' was now resumed, 
and with a clearer insight tha,n in the preceding reign. 



lo8 The Early Tudors. 151 1 

It was seen not only that the power of reading a verse 
from the Latin psalms (and thus proving 

Argument ,,,, -v, r r 

on Church clcrkly learning) ought not to tree men from 
pnvi eges. ^^ penalties of their crimes, but that even 
ordained priests ought to have no exemption. Seeing 
Church rules thus assailed, Bishops not only adhered 
strongly to the law as it was, but even ventured on 
a prosecution of Dr. Standish who was advising change ; 
this, however, they had to drop upon a threat oi prcE- 
munire. On the general question they argued that our 
Lord himself had said ' nolite tangere Christos meos ' — 
an unfortunate quotation which laid them open to the 
retort that these words were spoken, not by our Lord, 
but by David more than 1,000 years before his time, 
and moreover that the ' anointed ' of the Psalm meant 
all true believers and not exclusively the clergy. In 
spite, however, of this foil in reasoning, the clergy were 
for the time successful ; a temporary Act upon the sub- 
ject was allowed to expire, and it was only after Henry's 
breach with the Pope that the Parliament ventured again 
to abridge these particular privileges of the Church. 

By a remarkable coincidence the throne of Scotland 
was now occupied by a brother-in-law who had the same 

naval tastes as Henry himself. James IV., 
of Scotland. the husband of Margaret Tudor, had built 
Barons. Under his personal superintendence a vessel 

called the ' Michael,' which was a worthy rival 
of the largest ships in the English navy. She was 240 feei 
long ; her hull of solid oak was ten feet thick, so that the 
artillery of the time had no effect upon her ; and she car- 
ried nearly 1,500 men. Yet she never did any such ex- 
ploits as those of the smaller vessels commanded by 
Sir Andrew Wood of Largs and the Bartons. Sir 
Andrew, with the ' Caravel ' and the ' Flower,' sue- 



151 1 Peaceful Beginnings of the netu Reigft. 109 

ceeded in bringing into Leith five English pirate ships ; 
when Stephen Bull, a celebrated English seaman, was 
sent to encounter him, he carried on a running fight from 
the Forth to the Tay, and at last took the Englishman 
into Dundee. The other great naval captain, Andrew 
Barton, had been aggrieved by the Portuguese govern- 
ment, and held a letter of reprisal from James III. 
against them; after a while he began to extend his 
violences to English vessels also. On this the Earl of 
Surrey declared in 15 12 that the narrow seas should not be 
so infested while he had estate enough to furnish a ship, 
or a son to command her ; and no less a person than Sir 
Edward Howard, the Lord Admiral, took charge of the ves- 
sels he prepared. Sir Thomas, the admiral's elder brother, 
who was serving under him, parted company in a storm, 
and came up alone with Andrew Barton in the ' Lion ;' a 
desperate engagement ensued, Barton cheering his men to 
his last breath, and they refusing to submit as long as he 
lived. Meanwhile Sir Edward himself had taken the sister 
vessel, and all who remained alive of the crews were carried 
to London as prisoners. Yet they were afterwards allowed 
to return to Scotland — a plain proof that they were not 
considered as absolutely foes to mankind, although Henry 
replied to the Scottish remonstrances that ' punishing 
pirates had never been held to be a breach of peace 
among princes.' The question where the wrong lay thus 
remained unsettled ; and in the depression following the 
battle of Flodden the principal Scottish men-of-war were 
sold to France, and Scotland's short period of naval 
glory came to an end. 

Early in 1511 it became too clear that the young King 
intended to plunge into the Continental wars arising 
out of the French invasions of Italy, and thus to dis- 
appoint the thinking men who had looked for an era 



no The Early Tudor s. 151 1 

of kindness and improvement. Erasmus, the unfailing 

spokesman of sound opinion at the time, was 

PVan^'* i^ despair at the prospect for the future. 

^o"' J , Folly, it seemed to him, was resuming her 

regarded. / . ° 

ancient reign under the auspices of the 
tyrants who ruled Europe ; and trade, learning, humanity, 
religion would all go to wreck. ' O that God,' he says, 
' would deign to still the tempest of war ! What madness 
is it ! The wars of Christian princes begin for the most 
part out of ambition, hatred, or lust, or like diseases of 
the mind. You may see even decrepit old men display all 
the vigour of youth, sparing no cost, shrinking from no 
toil, stopped by nothing, if only they can turn law, religion, 
peace, and all human affairs upside down. Think, too, 
of the crimes which are committed under the pretext of 
war, for among the din of arms good laws are silent: 
what rapine, what sacrilege, what other crimes which 
decency forbids to mention ! The demoralisation, too, 
goes on for years after the war is over.' 'Let any 
physiognomist,' he says on another occasion, ' consider 
the look and features of an eagle — those rapacious and 
cruel eyes, that threatening curve of the beak, those 
wicked jaws, that stern front — will he not recognise at 
once the image of a king ? Add to this that threatening 
scream at which every animal trembles. At this scream 
of the eagle the people quake, the senate yields, the no- 
bility cringes, the judges concur, laws and constitutions 
give way ; neither right nor religion, neither justice nor 
humanity, avails. Of all birds, the eagle alone has seemed 
to wise men the type of royalty — carnivorous, greedy, 
hateful to all, the curse of all, and surpassing even its 
great powers of doing harm by its desire for doing it.' Nor 
did Erasmus's friend Colet shrink from expressing quite 
clearly his hatred for a warlike policy even before 



151 1 Peaceful Beginnings of the new Reign. iil 

Henry himself. We are told that ' he preached wonder- 
fully, on the victory of Christ, exhorting all men to fight 
and conquer under the banner of this their King.' He 
showed that when wicked men destroy one another out of 
hatred and ambition, they fight under the banner not of 
Christ, but of the devil. ' How difficult a thing it is,' said 
he, ' to die a Christian death on a field of battle ! how few 
undertake a war except from hatred and ambition ! how 
hardly possible is it for those who have brotherly love, 
without which no one can see the Lord, to thrust their 
sword into their brother's blood ! ' The King, after 
hearing this sermon, was anxious lest it should stand in 
the way of volunteering, and sent for the preacher to 
Greenwich ; after an hour and a half of conversation he 
still remained persuaded that his war was exceptionally 
just, but those who hoped for Colet's disgrace were dis- 
appointed by Henry's declaring that this was the kind of 
doctor for him. This incident happened after the first 
campaign of the war was over; before it began Henry 
had been strongly dissuaded from it by his Council, who 
warned him that the use of firearms had destroyed the 
advantage which England had hitherto derived from her 
archery, that islands should not make conquests on the 
Continent, that England alone was quite sufficient as a 
kingdom, and that voyages of discovery were the one 
means of extending it profitably. It was perhaps un- 
fortunate that Sebastian Cabot was now away, and 
that there was no one in the country equally capable 
of turning Henry's thoughts in the latter direction. As 
it was, all expostulation was in vain, and the fancy of a 
youth of one-and-twenty had its own way. There was to 
be a war, which was in its turn to originate many others ; 
its causes and conduct belong to the next chapter. 



112 The Early Tudor s. 151 1 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE WAR OF TOURNAY. 
151I-1514. 

In 1511 Henry VIII. began his attack on France in de- 
fence of Pope Julius II. ; and the causes of the war in 
which he was about to mingle require to be 
JfCa^bSy. clearly stated as illustrating the political feel- 
ing of the time, and as accounting for things 
farther on. It sprang originally from the jealousy of Vene- 
tian power felt alike by the Emperor Maximilian, by 
Ferdinand of Aragon, by Louis XII. of France, and above 
all by the Pope. Between these powers was formed in 
1 508 the League of Cambray, so called from the secret 
negotiations at that place between Margaret of Savoy, 
Maximilian's daughter, and Cardinal d'Amboise as 
French plenipotentiary. Venice had of late been losing 
territory in the East, Lepanto, St. Maura, and others of 
her possessions having been taken by the Turks ; accord- 
ingly she had wished to extend her dominions in Italy 
itself, and had seized Rimini and Faenza amid the con- 
fusion which followed the death by poison of Pope Alex- 
ander VI. in 1503, thus controlling much of the seaboard 
of the Papal States. Her territories now included Ra- 
venna, Treviso, Padua, Verona, Crema, and Brescia; 
and in ruling these she showed such a liberal spirit as to 
be able in time of trial to rely on them implicitly. She 
had even made the beginnings of a settlement on Neapol- 
itan soil by lending Ferdinand of Aragon 200,000 crowns, 
and receiving in pledge the ports of Trani, Brindisi, Gal- 
lipoli, Pulignano, and Otranto. Besides this wide do- 



151 1 • The War of Tournay. 113 

minion, she was still the queen of maritime enterprise 
and trade, her supremacy not having been yet destroyed, 
in spite of the discoveries of Columbus and Vasco de 
Gama. Her factories still extended to the mouth of the 
Don, and her linen, gilt leather, silks, and glass were, as 
we have seen, the best in the world. Moreover, printing 
had been established there within fifteen years of its first 
invention, and carried to high perfection by the Aldi. All 
this magnificence excited the utmost envy in the poverty- 
stricken monarchies of Western Europe ; the theory 
being, as Bayard puts it, that ' God was certainly angry 
with the Venetians for living so gloriously and gorgeously, 
and making such small account of the other princes of 
Christendom.' Under these circumstances a plan of 
spoliation was easily settled beforehand ; the Pope was 
to recover Rimini, Faenza,- and Ravenna, Ferdinand his 
Neapolitan harbours (without paying the sum for which 
they had been pledged), and Maximilian the noble cities 
of Padua, Verona, and Vicenza, with several others. For 
the conquest of these last the King of the Romans was 
promised help from the native nobles, who hoped that the 
Austrian power would re-establish against their fellow- 
citizens the feudal privileges of which the Venetian rule 
lavoured by the middle and lower classes had deprived 
thein. 

The war began disastrously for Venice, as her troops 
were terribly defeated (May 14, 1509) at Agnadello, a vil- 
lage near Crema where they had proposed to 
stop the French after their passage of the of Venice. 
Adda ; and so little were they able to recover 
themselves, that the enemy advanced as far as Mestre and 
Fusina in the environs of Venice, and even threw some 
hundreds of cannon-shot across the lagoon into the city. 
In the midst of this confusion the Venetians resolved upon 
I 



114 '^^^^ Early Tudors. 151 1 

a stroke of that magnanimity which seldom fails in political 
affairs ; they released from their allegiance the cities on 
the mainland, and allowed them to make the best terms 
they could with the victors. This created such an en- 
thusiasm in their favour, that Treviso, Padua, and other 
places took the earliest opportunity of rising against 
Maximilian and returning to the Venetian rule ; and 
when the King of the Romans tried to punish Padua 
for this, its stern resistance made him glad to raise the 
siege. Very soon the usual vices of a coalition had begun 
to show themselves ; the French, too, offended Julius by 
taking Bologna from him, and were also promoting a 
Church Council at Pisa in opposition to his power. Fer- 
dinand's natural jealousy of France had reappeared with 
her victories, while the Pope had already recovered 
Reggio, Mirandola, and Parma, and was ready to listen 
to the Venetian offer of restoring Ravenna to him. As, 
therefore, Julius had only wished to use the League of 
Cambray for his own purposes, he now contrived (October 
15, 1 511) a new treaty, under the name of the Holy 
League, by which he himself, the Venetians, and Ferdi- 
nand were to expel the French from Italy. Against this 
coalition the French fought bravely under Gaston de Foix, 
taking by storm the city of Brescia, which was one of 
those most devoted to Venice, and utterly defeating the 
Spaniards at Ravenna (April 11, 1512). Here, however, 
Gaston was slain, and the loss of the victors was so enor- 
mous that their power in Italy collapsed, and they found 
difficulty even in holding on at a few scattered points. 

„„^ At this point Henry VIII. resolved to strike 

Henry VIII. . . '^ ■' 

joins the m With his fresh and unimpaired forces. He 

League. professed to be scandalised at the impiety of 

His failure. waging War with the Pope, who, he main- 
tained, had no superior on earth, and must be borne 



1512 The War of Tournay. I15 

with, however froward ; but at the same time had the pre- 
posterous hope that he might reconquer France, though 
its population and revenue were four times those of 
England. On his marriage he had professed that he 
and Katherine would thenceforward be subjects of 
Ferdinand I. Now his astute father-in-law took him at 
his word by inducing him to send a force to the Spanish 
frontier and invade France from thence, while he him- 
self, thus sheltered from attack, was adding Navarre to 
his dominions. From the English point of view there 
may have been an idea of waking up old feehngs of 
attachment to our rule at Bordeaux ; at any rate, at- 
tempts to conquer the Garonne country were sure to be 
popular, as, if successful, they would make wine cheaper 
by half in England. Accordingly an army of 10,000 men 
was organised by the genius of Wolsey, who had lately 
entered the King's service, and despatched under the 
Marquis of Dorset to Fuentarabia, where they landed 
June 7, 1 512. Ferdinand had promised that an army of 
his under the Duke of Alva should join them in the 
invasion of Guienne ; but, instead of making this good, 
he continued his operations in Navarre, while all kinds 
of misfortunes befel his unhappy allies. They found no 
tents provided for them, though the season was most 
rainy, and no sufficient provisions, though their own had 
been plundered by the mariners while they were seasick ; 
the hot Spanish wines produced fever, and beer there 
was none. The officers were almost useless from inex- 
perience, and discontent became rife in the camp, many 
of the men refusing to serve unless their pay was raised 
from sixpence to eightpence a day, as on the lower sum 
they were in danger of starvation. On August 28 a 
council of war was held at St. Sebastian, and the army 
took the stran'^e resolution of returning home without 



ii6 



The Early Titdors. 



1513 



orders. In vain did Henry write to Ferdinand desiring 
him to detain it by force ; by October 7 they were on 
the way home, and a shower of epigrams from a,ll 
Europe was preparing for the warriors so soon weary 
of the field. Unable, however, to fix the responsibility 
on any one in particular, Henry resolved by the advice 
of his Council to let the matter drop — with the satisfac- 
tion of knowing that the influence of France had been 
increased by the failure of his attack thus far. Soon, 

CAMPAIGN OF TEROUENNE. 




\ I'erouenrni 

iMoples., .' ' 

^ /o .• ';AE.TOI 

I -N ! 1 Arras 



I JltsU.iii \ S . o '1 .i^^j^ 

^ VourJerm'-' IX. t- 



however, an act of peculiar, though unsuccessful, daring 
came to restore both King and nation to better humour. 

In March 1513 Sir Edward Howard with forty-three 
vessels sailed for the Breton coast as the forerunner of the 
larger expedition planned for the year, and 
longing to avenge the loss of the ' Sovereign,' 
which had been burned in the preceding 
He soon drove the French fleet opposed to him 
to shelter under the guns of Brest, where they fortified 
themselves in order to wait for six of their galleys from 



operations. 

Aug-ust. 



1 5 13 The War of Tournay. 117 

the Mediterranean. Hearing that these were near, and 
had anchored between two forts in water too shallow for 
his ships to approach, Sir Edward resolved to attack all 
six with the only two galleys which he had ; being, it is 
said, stung by a hint from the Council at home that in in- 
viting Henry to command in person at the destruction 
of the French fleet he had wislied to evade his duty. 
He laid his own galley close to a hostile one, and had 
already boarded her in person, when the vessels hap- 
pened to part, and he was left almost unsupported on 
the enemy's deck. Unwilling that they should have the 
spoils of an English admiral, he threw his gold chain 
and whistle into the sea, and next moment was thrust 
overboard and perished. In recognition of his splendid 
services, Henry restored his father to the Dukedom of 
Norfolk, and made his brother Sir Thomas Earl of Surrey 
just in time to command at Flodden. 

On July 26, 1 513, Henry advanced in person from his 
city of Calais to join Maximilian at Are; and was hardly 
less beguiled by him than he had been by 
Ferdinand. For not only did the poverty- France." 
stricken Emperor obtain pay as Henry's sol- 
dier, but he induced him to attack two places not really 
important to his interests, but very much so to those of his 
confederate. These were Terouenne and Tournay. The 
former of these was a French frontier town just outside 
Maximilian's province of Artois. He had vainly striven 
to conquer it in 1479; and it had lately been a constant 
annoyance to his Artois subjects, who ardently desired to 
see it reduced and its fortifications levelled with the 
ground. Tournay, though in the rear of Maximilian's 
advanced dominions, had remained as a French outlier 
in his territory, and was therefore a thorn in his side. 
Both places were quite beyond the true line of an Eng- 



li8 The Early Tudors. 1513 

llsh invasion, which should naturally have been straight 
towards Paris. However, the siege of Terouenne was 
formed. On August 16, a French force under the Due 
de Longueville tried to relieve it, but was defeated by a 
charge of Maximilian's men-at-arms, supported by the 
English army, an exploit which gained for the Emperor 
in England the title of ' the second Mavors,' and which 
the French, with a satire which did not spare themselves, 
called the ' Battle of the Spurs.' The French general 
La Palice and the celebrated Bayard remained prisoners. 
On August 22 Terouenne surrendered, and on the 28th 
Tournay, in spite of the strength of its walls and gates. 

On leaving home, Henry had made Katherine Regent, 
and, in order to secure her position, had ordered the exe- 
cution of Edmund de la Pole, whose life had 

Battle of , . ., . ^ 1 A 1 1 1 

Fiodden been promised m 1506 to the Archduke 

^"'^'^' Phihp. It is said that Henry VII. had 

charged his son on his death-bed to regard the pledge as 
made for the reign only. During the French campaign, 
in fact on the same day as the Battle of the Spurs, James 
IV. of Scofland, who had thrown in his lot with France, 
was defeated and slain by Lord Surrey. This disaster to 
Scotland is so well known that it is only necessary to 
notice its salient points. After capturing the castles of 
Norham, Wark, and Ford, James took up his position on 
the defensible ridge of Fiodden, an offshoot of the Chev- 
iots between the Till on the east and the Tweed, near 
Coldstream, on the north — a proceeding which Surrey 
regarded as shabby in one who had accepted his chal- 
lenge to fight the matter out on equal ground. James's 
camp had the Till on its left and an impassable marsh on 
the right, and was defended in front by the whole of the 
splendid Scottish artillery. It was therefore unassailable, 
and Surrey could only turn it ; this he did splendidly by 



ISI3 



The War of Toitrnay. 



119 



carrying his 30,000 mep. first by Weetwood Bridge to the 
right bank of the Till (as if he were retreating to 
Berwick), and then back by Twisel Bridge, near the 
junction of the rivers — thus placing himself between 
James and Scotland. Borthwick, the commander of the 
Scottish artillery, entreated permission to cannonade the 

BATTLE OF FLODDEN FIELD. 




enemy while recrossing the river ; but the distance from 
Flodden, which was six miles, would not allow of the 
guns being properly supported, even if they could be 
brought up in time. Surrey was therefore allowed to get 
clear over and form on the left bank before James was 
near enough to attack. Even when he did so, every- 



120 The Early Tiidors. 15 14 

thing was mismanaged. The Highlanders, who for the 
first time in recent warfare were then fighting beside a 
Lowland force, were not allowed to rush on in the pecu- 
liar manner which made them formidable ; the Scottish 
guns did little, while Surrey's were most effective ; and, 
Avorst of all, James himself, instead of acting as a general 
should, plunged into the fight as soon as his centre was 
engaged, in hope of meeting Surrey in single combat, 
and fell when he had all but reached his enemy, the chief 
men of his army being slain around him. His body was 
discovered among a heap of slain, and wrapped in lead, 
but not buried, as he had died under excommunication. 
There is a sad story of its being shamefully misused some 
years after at the monastery of Sheen ; a still sadder one, 
that the Scots believed that he had escaped from the field 
and gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Nearly the 
whole of the Scottish peerage were among the 10,000 who 
fell ; and of the gentry almost every family had lost one 
or more of its members. Well might the graceful and 
pathetic ballad which records the calamity say that ' the 
flowers of the forest were a' wede away.' 

Yet this overthrow of the ally of France did little to 

strengthen the confederacy against Louis XII., which 

was by this time dying of inanition. Julius 

effects of II. had died in 1 513, and had been succeeded 

'' ^^^' by the pacific Leo X., one of Linacre's young 

fellow-scholars at Florence. Maximilian hadbeen bribed 
off by the promise of Louis' daughter Renee for his 
grandson Charles, with the French claims on Milan for her 
dowry, and Ferdinand was content with his acquisition 
of Navarre and the Neapolitan ports. In a frenzy of 
anger at being deserted when Maximilian and Francis 
made peace at Noyon, Henry meditated the wildest 
schemes of vengeance. He grasoed eagerly at the offer 



1 51 5 The War of Tournay. 121 

of a French alliance, and was ready even to stultify him- 
self by helping Louis to recover Navarre. A marriage 
was to cement this new friendship ; the French king 
having just become a widower by the death of Anne of 
Bretagne, and Henry's young and lovely sister Mary 
being still undisposed of, though she had thought of mar- 
rying the Duke of Suffolk. The poor girl was therefore 
sacrificed to the new alliance, Henry engaging that she 
should be allowed to please herself next tiine, and the 
bridegroom's age and state of health affording a pleasing 
hope that this time was not far off. In fact, indigestion 
and late hours soon ended the ill-assorted union, and 
Mary, resolved not to be again a victim to her brother's 
policy, married Suffolk privately on the earliest opportu- 
nity, and managed, though with difficulty, to disarm the 
royal anger by agreeing to pay a large sum yearly towards 
the expenses of her first marriage. Louis was succeeded 
(January i, 1515) by his cousin and son-in-law, the Due 
d'Angouleme, under the name of Francis I.; and from 
Mary's second and happier marriage ultimately sprang 
the great family of the Greys. 

We cannot but see that these campaigns left Henry and 
England politically where they were ; except indeed that 
no one would now deny that the islanders were stout men 
of their hands and good backers for Emperor or King in 
a struggle. The sum spent must have been prodigious, 
for each archer was paid what would now be six to eight 
shillings a day ; indeed the war devoured the income of 
twelve years. Public order was for the time at an end : 
in 1 5 14 the royal treasure-waggons were robbed by a 
bold gang of whom eighty were captured and executed, 
the rest escaping to sanctuary. Taxation rose to an 
astonishing height ; twice over in twelve months an in- 
come-tax of sixpence in the pound exacted from the very 



122 The Early Tudors. 151 5 

day-labourers between two and three weeks' wages. At 
the same thne an Act was passed (15 15) to restrain the 
rise in the cost of labour naturally resulting from the drain 
of men for the army, of which the first draught is, as Mr. 
Brewer remarks, in Wolsey's own hand. The want of 
labourers in turn converted more fallows into sheep- 
farms, still farther decreasing the rural population. Nor 
did the war deal more tenderly with traders ; for, besides 
the preposterous taxation which crippled them, their 
business was liable to interruption even by the quarrels 
of confederates, as when Henry in 151 5 stopped the 
export of wool to Holland and Zealand on some notion 
that Maximilian's grandson Charles had affronted him. 
Well had the war justified its dissuaders, and, what was 
worse still, the notion that we ought to reconquer France 
might revive and renew it at any moment. It had also 
fostered in Henry the ruthlessness which his portraits 
alone would prove to have been natural to him, and which 
afterwards made his times of peace, like those of 
Alexander the Great, more dangerous to those about 
him than many battles would have been. Such is ever 
the bitter fruit of wars like his, alike causeless, ill- 
managed, cruel, and inconclusive as they almost always 
were. 



CHAPTER X. 



DOMESTIC AFFAIRS AFTER THE PEACE WITH FRANCE. 
1515-1518. 

Peace was now restored to England ; the question was 
whether or no the government would restore national 
prosperity after the trials which it had sustained. The 
task was not hopeless ; for, though sorely burthened at 



1 51 5 Domestic Affairs after the Peace. 123 

home, our commerce had been extended abroad at the 
expense of Venice, ships from London and 
Southampton having found their way to tiade'hi the 
Sicily, Crete, Chios, and even to Tripoh and i^nd's^'^' 
Beyrout ; English merchants had also been 
profitably employing vessels hired at Ragusa and other 
Mediterranean ports. Indeed neither Henry nor his great 
minister Wolsey could be charged with general indiffer- 
ence to trade interests ; for they founded the Corporation 
of the Trinity House for the management of pilotage and 
lighthouses, spent not less than 65,000/. on the pier at 
Dover, and improved the harbours of Hull, Southampton, 
Newcastle, Scarborough, and Calais. The inland com- 
munications of the country were also by degrees made 
better, and the navy-yards and storehouses of Woolwich 
and Deptford founded. In order to increase trade with 
the Netherlands, Wolsey obtained a congress at Antwerp 
in 1 51 5 (where England was represented by Bishop 
Tunstal, Sir E. Poynings, and the young Thomas More), 
in the hope of replacing England on the footing of the 
'Intercursus Malus ' described in Chapter V. The 
Flemings strongly maintained that this had been a per- 
sonal arrangement of the Archduke Philip's, and had 
fallen through with his death. To this the English 
replied that he had expressly agreed for his heirs after 
him, that no other agreement had been substituted for it, 
and that no documents could be quoted to prove that it 
had ever stopped. From this subject the Congress passed 
to the discussion of grievances, Tunstal complaining 
that his countrymen had been forced to pay illegal tolls 
even when driven in by storms, and that einbargoes 
were sometimes laid on their vessels for years, after 
which they had to pay 'anchor money' for the time of 
detention. The quarrels on points like these rose so 



124 The Early Tudors. 151 5 

high that one of the commissioners was excommunicated 
in the Antwerp churches, and the others were ' calum- 
niated frightfully.' Fortunately for them, political cir- 
cumstances just then made Charles's advisers more 
anxious than ever for an English alliance, and therefore 
all difficulties solved themselves. The question of the 
' Intercursus Malus' was adjourned for five years; but 
meantime it was to remain in force. As to other 
grievances, our merchants must have been hard to please 
if they were not satisfied. All English privileges were 
extended: they might choose their own brokers and 
porters ; all legal remedies should be freely open to them ; 
their cases should take precedence of all others, and be 
always decided within six days ; quarrels of Englishmen 
among themselves were to be settled in their own consular 
courts, which would be supported by the magistrates in 
case of resistance ; and the factory at Antwerp was to 
remain theirs in full property. 

About this time a curious incident arose out of Henry's 
anxiety for the welfare of seaports. A Cornish member 

named Strode had promoted an Act of Par- 
m?nin^. liament hindering Cornish mine-owners from 

throwing rubbish into the rivers and thus 
forming bars below. He had overlooked the fact that the 
Cornish and Devonshire miners lived under a constitu- 
tion of their own, holding a small district parliament 
under the Warden of the Stannaries, the enactments of 
which had the force of local laws. This body had passed 
an ordinance in 15 10 that every one might dig for tin 
where he could find it, and ' carry the waters to his works 
according to old custom,' all hinderers being liable to a 
fine of 40/. This they proceeded coolly to inflict on Strode 
for his doings at Westminster ; and, as he would not pay, 
they threw him into irons in a damp dungeon, and fed 



1 51 5 Domestic Affairs after the Peace. 125 

him there for three weeks on bread and water. Fortu- 
nately he was wanted at the end of that time to do his duty 
as a collector of taxes, and a royal order set him free. 
But before he was released his captors added insult to 
injury by making him give a bond of loo/. for costs ! 
The sentence and the bond were of course cancelled by 
Parliament, which also asserted that no one could be pun- 
ished either for bringing or procuring a bill to be brought 
into Parliament, or for any opinion delivered in speaking 
to a motion. Nothing was at that time done to remedy 
the damage to the rivers ; but twenty years later, when 
Plymouth, Falmouth, Dartmouth, Teignmouth, and Fowey 
were all suffering from the same cause, and a ship of 100 
tons could hardly get up where there had been water 
enough for one of 800, a law was passed forbidding the 
use for mining purposes of any river flowing into a har- 
bour ; even in this it was thought necessary to guard by 
an express clause againt Parliament being set at nought 
by the Court of Stannaries. In the latter part of the 
reign parliamentary privileges were farther established by 
the decision of the judges in 1542 that the Commons had 
acted legally in setting free by their own authority, and 
without any legal process, Ferrars the member for Ply- 
mouth, who had been imprisoned for debt by the City 
authorities. The quarrel was not settled until the sheriffs 
and all parties concerned in the arrest had been sent to 
prison, and the King himself had expressed strong appro- 
bation of the vigour displayed by the House of Commons 
in the maintenance of its titne-honoured exemption. 

As our traders were anxious to sell their cloths by 
retail in as many Flemish towns as possible, 
it might be supposed that they would have /o^reigSs"' 
been ready to admit the idea of reciprocity. 
But fairness in such claims is not always thought of where 



126 The Early Tudors. 15 17 

great interests are at stake ; and our merchants were in 
point of fact not less anxious to keep foreigners' goods 
out of England than to sell their own elsewhere. Good 
reasons for restricting imports were of course ready ; it was 
argued in the first place that foreigners made their profits 
by tempting people to buy ' fancies and tryfuUes ' such 
as England might well do without, and in the second 
(with doubtful consistency) that foreign competition was 
destroying all wholesome English trade. Dutchmen were 
bringing over timber ready cut, and leather ready manu- 
factured, with nails, locks, baskets, cupboards, stools, 
tables, chests, girdles, saddles, and printed cloths. ' The 
Merchant Strangers,' men querulously said, ' are import- 
ing silk, wine, oil, and iron, and moreover carrying away 
so much wool, tin, and lead, that Englishmen can have 
no living.' By thus taking imports and exports separately, 
and not as balancing one another, and by showing to their 
own satisfaction that England was parting with what she 
most wanted in exchange either for superfluities or for 
what should be made by English hands, the grumblers 
raised the jealousy against foreigners to a white heat ; 
and, on May-day, 1517, it burst out with great violence, 
through a protectionist sermon preached by Dr. John 
Bell at the Spital Church a few days before. Taking 
for his text ' Terram dedit filiis hominum,' the orator pro- 
ceeded to descant on the public grievances. ' The land,' 
he said, ' was given to Englishmen, and as birds defend 
their nests, so ought Englishmen to cherish and defend 
themselves, and to hurt and grieve aliens, for respect of 
their commonwealth.' As it began to be rumoured that 
May-day would be chosen for an attack upon the Steel- 
yard, which was the London centre of German trade, 
Wolsey took care to send for the Lord Mayor on April 
30, and commanded him by all means to preserve the 



1 5 1? - Domestic Affairs after the Peace. 127 

peace. Accordingly a meeting of the Aldermen was 
held, and they were ordered to proclaim in their several 
wards that every house-owner must stay at home and keep 
in all his household from nine o'clock that evening till 
the same hour of the following morning. The announce- 
ment, however, produced in the notoriously turbulent 
ward of Cheap the very disturbance which it was intended 
to prevent. The cry of ' clubs ' was at once raised, and 
hundreds of apprentices came pouring from the precincts 
of St. Paul's. The rioters broke open the Compter and 
Newgate, and released some prisoners who had been 
committed in the last few days for attacks on foreigners. 
After this they proceeded, in defiance of the magistrates, to 
plunder private houses, especially those of strangers, the 
masters of which they announced their intention of be- 
heading by lynch-law. In the midst of the tumult the 
Lieutenant of the Tower actually opened fire upon the city 
from his batteries, creating immense terror, but doing 
little real damage. Not finding any foreigners at home, 
the mob began to disperse ; but the last who retreated, 
to the number of 300, were intercepted and sent to prison. 
In order to strike more terror, the government prepared 
ten moveable gibbets as if to execute the prisoners at all 
parts of the town ; but, whether from the influence of 
bribes judiciously applied, or from a certain sympathy 
with the rioters felt by men in power, the only person 
finally executed was a broker named Lincoln, by whose 
persuasion the unlucky sermon had been preached. The 
day was long remembered in London as the 'Evil May-day, ' 
and it is said that the gaieties proper to the season were 
never again celebrated as freely as before this untoward 
event. That foreign trade after this was thought to require 
some restriction we may infer from the Act of 1525 which 
forbade alien merchants to take any foreigners as appren- 



128 The Early Tudors. 15 17 

tices or to have more than two foreign journeymen — a 
blow evidently aimed at the peculiar constitution of the 
German factory of the Steelyard in London, whose man- 
agers with their employes, all foreigners alike, lived in a 
half-monastic fashion within their fortified buildings, un- 
married, and avoiding connections with their neighbours. 
A still unkinder stroke was that the same Act placed 
every alien exercising a handicraft in London under 
the ' search and reformation ' of the fellowship of his 
particular craft there. 

The population of England (which had been about 
2,500,000 at the time of the poll-tax of 1377) had now 
increased to about 3,500,000. Yet, curiously enough, 
there was a general impression that the number of people 
„ in the countrv was diminishing. It was evi- 

Population 1 , , 'i , 

shifting in dcut that the larger corporate towns, such as- 

England. . , . , , 

Norwich, were gettmg less populous; there 
being obviously little inclination to rebuild decayed 
houses or to restore them after a fire. But the cause of 
this phenomenon quite escaped the notice of political 
thinkers. This was, in fact, the pressure of the guild 
regulations in the large borough towns, which people 
were glad to escape by living beyond their limits. Thus 
an employer might be comparatively free as to his mode 
and hours of working, the number of his apprentices 
and hands, and the wages which he paid. Accordingly 
manufactures now spread themselves over several new 
districts ; amongst others the towns of Birmingham and 
Manchester increased much at this time. As even accu- 
rate observers could not see the whole country at once, 
they were naturally misled by the appearances of decay 
in the older and more celebrated towns, and thought that 
the same process was going on everywhere. 

A far less imaginary depopulation of the country dis- 



1 517 Domestic Affairs after the Peace. 129 

tricts, such as the ' Utopia ' had lamented, had excited 
alarm as early as 1489, when it was remarked 
that the Isle of Wight, which, as being par- tionoFthe" 
ticularly exposed to French attack, required districts 
to be well peopled, was becoming ' desolate 
and not inhabited, but occupied by beasts and cattle.' It 
was therefore enacted in that year that no one of any rank 
whatever should hold more than one farm there of the 
maximum value of 6/. \y. i^d. a year, and that those who 
occupied several such should elect which they would 
retain, and their leases be void as regarded the remainder. 
This restored the population of the island, and enabled it, 
as Mr. Froude has remarked, to foil the French invasion 
of 1546. In the present reign the same principle was 
carried out more broadly by an Act of 151 5, which 
ordered that, if the holder of any estate in England 
destroyed farmhouses upon it, the superior lord should 
resume possession of half of it until they were rebuilt ; 
and by another twenty years after, which gave the same 
power to the King, if no intermediate lord had exercised it. 
The change in the hands of new proprietors from cus- 
tomary to competition rents was also bitterly complained 
of. It produced, as Bishop Latimer shows in 
a well-known passage, a fatal change in the mren4^ 
position of the smaller tenants. ' My father,' 
he says, 'was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own; 
only he had a farm of three or four pounds by year, and 
hereupon tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men ; he 
had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked 
thirty kine. He was able and did find the King a har- 
ness, with himself and his horse until he came to the place 
where he should receive the King's wages. I can remem- 
ber that I buckled his harness when he went into Black- 
heath Field. He kept me to school, or else I had not 
J 



130 The Early Tudors. 15 17 

been able to have preached before the King's majesty now. 
He married my sisters with five pound or twenty nobles a 
piece. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbours, and 
. some alms he gave to the poor. And all this he did off 
the said farm, where he that now hath it payeth sixteen 
pounds by year or more, and is not able to do anything 
for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a 
cup of drink to the poor.' This agrees with Mote's 
declaration in the ' Utopia ' that tenants were ' pilled and 
polled ' by their landlords, who not only drove off their 
tenants to make sheep-walks, but constantly managed 
either by fraud or violence to make small freeholders sell 
their lands. And the trouble continued through Henry 
VIII. 's reign into that of his son, when the Protector 
Somerset's ill-planned endeavour to remedy it was one of 
the great causes of his fall. 

In the miserable state of Scotland after the battle of 
Flodden two courses had been open to Henry ; he might 
^ , , either have ordered Surrey to advance and 

Scotland 

under Queen conquer the Country once for all, or he might 

Margaret. ^ , ^ ■« ^ ■ i^ 

have answered Queen Margaret s appeal tor 
brotherly help and supported the infant King by all 
means in his power. Yet he took neither, but allowed 
his victorious army to be disbanded, and Scottish affairs 
to fall into hopeless confusion without interference. A 
Parliament was at once held at Edinburgh which ap- 
pointed Margaret Regent and guardian of the King ; but 
in August 1 5 14 she forfeited all pubhc confidence by 
marrying Lord Angus, who was considered as the head 
of the English party in Scotland, and a rebelHon at once 
arose against her. Her opponents entreated Francis I. 
to send over to their help the Duke of Albany, the 
younger brother of James III., who had lived all his life 
in France and held the rank of Lord High Admiral there. 



1 517 Domestic Affairs after the Peace. 131 

Escaping with some difficulty from the English cruisers 
off St. Malo, Albany reached Dumbarton in May 151 5 
with a considerable train of Frenchmen, whom he pro- 
ceeded to raise to positions of authority, thus exciting a 
jealousy second only to that against England. Yet he 
was appointed Protector till James V. reached the age of 
eighteen, and at once besieged Stirling Castle in order to 
get possession of the royal children. All this time Lord 
Dacre, who commanded on the Border, was trying various 
means to support the English interest in Scotland. He 
aided as strongly as possible the resistance to Albany, 
received all those who were exiled for rebelling against 
him, tried to carry off the princes by the help of Angus, 
and, failing in this, at last persuaded Margaret herself to 
take refuge in England. The Queen escaped to Berwick 
in September 151 5, and was immediately after this deliv- 
ered of a ' fair young lady,' afterwards well known as 
Lady Lennox, the mother of Henry Darnley, and con- 
sidered nearer the English succession from having been 
born on our soil. Ill and miserable, Margaret was car- 
ried on men's shoulders to Morpeth, and soon heard that 
her husband and his partisans had been defeated by the 
Protector. Angus himself was sent prisoner to France ; 
but he soon escaped to join his wife, and Henry was 
glad to welcome both as instruments for any future plan 
against Scotland. Meanwhile Albany was getting so 
weary of his position as Regent, that to escape from it he 
would, as he said, 'gladly have walked on foot all the 
way to London ' ; and in 15 16 he returned to France on 
business of his own, leaving French garrisons in the 
chief fortresses, but with little idea of returning at the 
time fixed. In 15 17 the treaty of Noyon allowed Mar- 
garet to return to Scotland ; where she found that her 
friends had been put to death for favouring her escape, 



132 The Early Tudors. 15 17 

and that she would not be allowed to take any part in the 
administration. 

Great and various also were the Irish troubles at this 

time, though they did not burst into actual war. Only 

five half-counties were really under Eng- 

The govern- ,. , , i • , , ■ r i 

mentof lish law, and m these the vexations of the 

courts were compelling landholders to sell 
the smaller estates. The power of the colonists had been 
also weakened by a pestilence which had raged among 
them, by the death of several eminent leaders without 
heirs, and by their disuse of English weapons. The 
only possible remedy seemed to be to call for more 
colonists — if possible one from each parish in England — 
to civilise Irish chieftains perforce by making them 
Lords of Parliament if they had 1,000 marks a year, 
and to induce them to send their sons to Dublin or 
Drogheda to be taught reading and writing, with the 
English manners and language. But at this time Henry 
had not sufficient interest in their country to make him 
carry through reforms of such importance ; consequently 
things went from bad to worse, and the Reformation was 
soon to make every difficulty tenfold. 

In 1517 the Pope produced a fresh scheme for a Crusade; 
as well he might, having himself been all but taken 

. prisoner by a Turkish fleet which was sweep- 

tempts at a ing the coast of Italy from Pisa to Terracina. 
The plan was, as usual, all too vast, includ- 
ing as it did the enlistment as allies of ' the Sophi of 
Persia, Prester John of the Indies, and the Kings of 
Nubia, Ethiopia, and Georgia.' It was hoped that by 
these strong measures it would be possible in three years, 
and at the cost of 12,000,000 ducats, to seize and fortify 
Mount Zion and several other points in Palestine, to 
invade Turkey from the side of Hungary and Poland, to 



1 51 5 The War of Pavia. 133 

support Fez and Morocco against the Turks, to reconquer 
Philippopolis and Adrianople, and then, after securing 
Eubcea or Chalcedon for a seaport, to crown the enter- 
prise by the seizure of Cairo, Alexandria, and Constanti- 
nople. To arrange these matters Cardinal Campeggio 
was sent to England as legate a latere, and, after some 
doubt whether English law would recognise him in tliat 
capacity, was welcomed with much pomp. But Papal 
Crusades were not believed in, and neither clergy nor 
laity would vote money for any such purposes ; thus the 
progress of the Turks remained unchecked, and the risk 
was from time to time most imminent that the nations of 
Europe might be subdued by them. Indeed, though such 
dangers gradually diminished, they were brought abso- 
lutely to an end only by two much later events, the great 
sea-fight at Lepanto in 1571 and Prince Eugene's land 
victory over the Turks at Peterwardein in 17 16. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE WAR OF PAVIA. 
1515-1527. 

On succeeding Louis XII. in 151 5, Francis I. had in- 
stantly resolved on a career of military enterprise, feeling 
quite unable to endure the loss of Milan and 
the exclusion of French influence from Italy hi'ilj'^^"* 
which had followed the death of Gaston de Pi'")'^°*^ 

. . . • Mangnano. 

Foix m 1 512. An application from Venice 
for aid against the tyranny of the Spaniards, Maximihan, 
and the Pope served as a plea for a new Italian expedi- 
tion. As the usual descent into Italy by the Mont Cenis 
and Susa was strongly guarded by the Swiss mercenaries 



134 The Early Tudors. 151 5 

of Spain, Francis, after collecting his army at Lyons, was 
persuaded to cross the Alps by the Val Vraita, leading 
from Barcelonnette to Saluzzo, the head of which is even 
now a trackless ridge covered with loose rocks. P^orcing 
its way thus, in spite of great perils and losses, to the 
junction of the Vraita with the Po, the French army 
appeared in Italy as if it had dropped from the skies ; and 
the Swiss, who formed the greater part of the Spanish 
and Papal army, retreated in some confusion on Milan. 
Francis was prudently trying to bribe off their opposition 
when his plan was frustrated by the arrival of 20,000 
more Swiss from the St. Gothard under Scheiner, the Car- 
dinal of Sion, a bitter enemy of the French. This leader 
immediately harangued his men, reminding them that 
ever since the fall of Charles the Bold in 1477 they had 
been the arbiters of Europe ; that no sovereign could 
either move or stand without their help ; and that if they 
did but stretch out their hands, there was money enough 
in Francis's military chest to enrich them all for life, and 
glory enough in defeating his forces to prove them the 
most redoubtable nation in the world. With these and 
other persuasions he induced them to make a hurried 
attack on the French, who were ten miles from Milan, at 
the village of Marignano. The battle began late in the 
evening, and before dark the Swiss had gained the 
superiority, and even taken fifteen French guns ; but 
Francis employed the night in posting his forces afresh, 
and supported them so ably with his remaining artillery 
that on the next day the enemy, with all their valour, 
could not break his lines, and were themselves crushed 
by charges of the men-at-arms. At least 10,000 Swiss 
were slain, and, what was more, their prestige of victory 
was broken. The survivors fell grimly back on Milan, 
and then retreated to their own country in consideration 



1516 The War of Pavia. 135 

of a payment from Francis. The victory was decisive ; 
for the Spanish and Papal commanders both asked for 
peace, leaving Milan to Francis as the prize of his few 
days' campaign, 

Every sovereign of Europe envied the young King of 
France the glory so quickly won ; Henry, above all, 
could not hide his chagrin at the victory which had so 
far outdone his own prowess. ' His eyes were so red,' 
says the French ambassador Bapaume, 'that it seemed 
as if the tears would come.' His chagrin was the greater 
because both he and the Emperor had assumed that 
Francis would certainly come to grief in Italy. In vain 
did the nobles around him urge that ' he ought to be glad 
that Francis, his good brother and ally, had defeated 
the Swiss, who were so fierce and haughty that they 
presumed to call themselves the rulers and correctors of 
princes.' Henry confessed that he ought to be glad, for 
that the Swiss 'were indeed mere villains, and he had 
ever known them as such.' However, this did not hinder 
him from sending to Switzerland some clever agents 
charged to subsidise both Maximilian and the Swiss and 
to excite them againt France. Money never came amiss 
to the Emperor ; indeed, in this case, he tried to possess 
himself of the Swiss subsidy as well as his own, and, 
after leading his army up to the gates of Milan, crowned 
all by accepting 200,000 crowns from the French, selling 
Verona to the Venetians, and withdrawing by the Valte- 
line to Trent in the Tyrol. As the bargain with France 
leaked out, it is no wonder that the English envoys, 
Tunstal and Knight, exhort Henry to ' close his purse for 
the future, and entertain Maximilian with words devised, 
thus treating the Emperor as the Emperor treated him.' 

In the following February (1516) occurred the death 
of Ferdinand of Aragon. His grandson Charles was 



136 The Early Tudors. 15 18 

now King of all Spain, having been before this the pos- 
sessor of the Netherlands, Flanders, Naples, 

wolsey s . ^ 

administra- Sicily, Artois, and Franche Comte. Thus 
the chief states of Europe were in the hands 
of three young sovereigns, Charles being sixteen years 
old, Francis twenty-four, and Henry twenty-five ; and the 
rest of Henry's reign, so far as it was concerned with 
foreign politics, was chiefly occupied in hindering alter- 
nately Francis and Charles from becoming supreme in 
Europe. For the present he was in a manner friendly 
to both. He lent Charles _the sum necessary for his 
voyage to Spain, and when he was thus out of the way 
gradually made overtures to Francis, disarming suspicion 
by pretending to hate him beyond measure. One strong 
inducement to this was Francis's offer to pay 400,000 
crowns for the restoration of Tournay. Hence Henry 
was willing in 1 5 1 8 to go so far as to marry his two-years- 
old daughter Mary to the new-born Dauphin of Fi-ance. 
Accordingly the Admiral Bonnivet was sent over to 
represent the Prince, and in that capacity placed a 
splendid wedding-ring on Mary's tiny finger. Little ap- 
pears to have been thought of the risk that England 
might thus become a province of France ; probably it 
was assumed that Henry and Katherine would still have 
sons. Thus Wolsey had succeeded, for the time, in 
placing England in a very unassailable position as regarded 
the two sovereigns. The time-honoured requirement of 
English trade was peace with Charles and the Nether- 
lands ; but the engagements with Francis were too clastic 
and too easily repudiated to be inconsistent with this 
main purpose. At the same time we had gained the power 
of calling France to our help, and thus secured an object 
still higher, that of freedom from Spanish control. In any 
case England might make her own terms for aiding either 



1 5 19 The War of Pavia. 137 

of the great rivals. And how valuable this power was 
appeared when, on Maximilian's death in 1519, Charles of 
Spain was elected Emperor against the competition of both 
France and Henry, and immediately began trying to en- 
list England on his side. For Wolsey's private ambition 
also, the quasi-friendship with both the great Powers was 
very desirable, as the circumstances might put it in the 
power of either Charles or Francis singly to make him 
Pope if a vacancy occurred during a war ; and both might 
agree to do this if no war was going on at the time. 
Meanwhile the Cardinal toiled on as usual in London. 
Business had always been his forte from the time when 
he had been first recommended to Henry by his speedy 
return from a mission to France, and by the boldness with 
which he had faced the responsibility of filling up a gap 
in his instructions. All matters of organisation during the 
late wars had been carried out by him. Now he was at 
the height of his power, the whole direction of home and 
foreign affairs being absolutely in his hands. As Chan- 
cellor he was constantly at Westminster Hall or the Star 
Chamber, judging causes in a manner which even his rivals 
could not help admiring. After this came a daily multi- 
tude of State affairs, whose pressure was so great that his 
friends entreated him, though in vain, to do no business 
after six in the evening for his health's sake. He kept a 
strong hand over the accounts of the country, so that 
even Henry's wastefulness was in a measure controlled ; 
and therefore was of course unpopular with those who, 
like Lord Mountjoy, had congratulated themselves at 
the beginning of the reign because ' avarice was now at 
an end, and wealth flowed like water.' To these tasks 
were added his duties as Cardinal and as Papal Legate 
a latere. Both these dignities had been confen-ed upon 
him by Henry's express desire — the former as the price of 



138 The Early Tudors. 1520 

the King's joining the League against Francis in 151 5, the 
latter as the only condition on which Campeggio would be 
received in 15 17. As Legate, his rule over the Church in 
England had a terrible completeness; for his jurisdiction 
extended over all bishops, superseded all privileges, and 
was final for all appeals. His enemies declared that he 
gained his influence over Henry by witchcraft, so com- 
pletely did he eclipse Warham, Fox, Norfolk, Suffolk, 
and the other members of the Council. His taste for 
splendour v/as intuitive ; it seemed rather a part of his 
general greatness than a sign of vanity that he should 
like to see the tapestries of his ante-chambers changed 
every week, to have round him curious clocks or pictures 
by Quentin Matsys, and to be followed by many attend- 
ants mounted on beautiful and well-trained horses. His 
choir was held to surpass the King's, although Sagu- 
dino says that the voices in the Chapel Royal were 
more divine than human ; indeed in all such things 
he seemed to aim at absolute perfection. Of course 
this demanded vast wealth, and he was not precisely 
scrupulous how he obtained it. But he was still more 
eager to obtain money for the King ; curious proofs of 
this are his standing out for an unusual proportion of 
the proceeds of Indulgences in England in 15 17, and his 
declaration in 1525 that he considered it a minister's 
duty to enrich his master at the expense of the people, 
' as Joseph did Pharaoh.' 

Hastening back from Spain for the purpose in the 
spring of 1520, the young Emperor visited England — thus 
performing, in the eyes ot all genuine lovers of etiquette, 
an act of extraordinary condescension to Henry, who by 
Papal ordinance ranked only ninth among sovereigns. 
But Charles was anxious to forestall the effect of the per- 
sonal interview between Henry and Francis which had 



1520 The War of Pavia. 139 

been already planned for the ensuing summer. Accord- 
ingly he landed at Dover on May 25, was visited by 
Henry there, and, like a dutiful nephew, returned with 
him to Canterbury to visit Katherine, who was on her 
part wild with delight at seeing the head of her own 
family and hearing her native language spoken. The 
two monarchs held much secret conference, the purport 
of which was unknown : but the presence of the Emperor, 
with his small and plainly-dressed suite, was clearly exer- 
cising a powerful influence, and we shall soon see that 
the heartless splendours of the Field of the Cloth of Gold 
were quite unable to counterbalance it. 

When the Emperor was gone, Henry sailed for Calais 
(May 31), Wolsey having obtained a promise that no 
French war-vessel should leave any Channel 
port as long as the interview lasted. The for- Qoth oi 
lorn town of Guisnes was appointed for the ^selessness 
meeting, but the English architects had during 
the preceding weeks raised on the Casde green there a 
splendid summer palace 328 feet square, pierced after the 
fashion of the day with many oriel windows. Its entrance 
was adorned with olive-crowned statues of antique ap- 
pearance, and a secret passage led from it to the castle. 
Francis, on his part, had imitated in a distant kind of 
way the English magnificence, having in vain asked that 
costly tents should be forbidden on either side ; hs had 
also proclaimed, in order to hmit his suite, that none of 
his subjects should come unbidden within two leagues of 
the royal procession. When the signal for starting was 
fired from Guisnes and answered from the French head- 
quarters at Ardres, there was a moment's anxiety. Lord 
Abergavenny declaring that Francis had brought with 
him twice the stipulated number of soldiers ; Henry, 
however, readily beheved that his men were frightening 



140 The Early Tudors. 1520 

the French quite as much, and did not hesitate to advance. 
The sovereigns embraced first on horseback, then on 
foot, while the English made the best use possible of 
their few words of French, the main part of which seems 
to have been ' bon amis.' At the next meeting Henry 
laughed outright at hearing a herald describe him as 
King of France, and jovially declared this to be ' a very 
great lie indeed.' On June 11 the jousts began and were 
continued for a week ; during them two notable events 
occurred, the death of a French knight by a too royal 
thrust of Henry's lance, and Francis's chivalrous act in 
coming to the English palace at breakfast-time with only 
four attendants, and thus deriding the precautions which 
had hitherto guarded their interviews. Such was in out- 
ward seeming the Field of the Cloth of Gold : of the in- 
ward heart-burnings which attended it no record has 
been kept, but we can easily imagine the feelings of those 
who, like the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Aber- 
gavenny, hated the whole thing as Wolsey's work, and 
would have been thankful if some quarrel had sprung 
from it to shake his power. There was no need for anxiety 
as to its effect in strengthening the French alliance ; for it 
was hardly over when Henry betook himself straight to 
the Emperor at Gravelines to renew the Canterbury con- 
ference, not vouchsafing to Francis the slightest hint of 
what the two were planning together. His next step was to 
send an ominous remonstrance against the French repairs 
of the Ardres fortifications : ' was his good brother intend- 
ing to disquiet the English subjects of the Pale?' Of 
course Francis's right was clear on his own side of the 
boundary : still he thought it better to yield, in the hope 
of at least delaying Henry's enmity. Meanwhile Charles's 
motives for conciliating Henry became stronger every 
day ; the cities of Spain were engaging in the struggle for 



1 52 1 . The War of Pavia. 14I 

liberty mentioned in Chapter I., and neither from thence 
nor from the Netherlands could he get any supplies of 
money. He had pledged himself to hold a Diet at 
Worms in the course of the year, and to settle there, not 
only the Luther affair, but all the outstanding feuds and 
disputes of Germany ; and it was most desirable for him to be 
in Italy and hinder the consolidation of French influence 
there. To accomplish even a part of these objects, the 
alliance of England was indispensable ; and negotiations 
to strengthen it were therefore going on apace, when the 
attention, not of England only, but of the foreign powers, 
was distracted by the striking episode of the trial and 
execution of the Duke of Buckingham in May 1521. 

As this nobleman was descended from Thomas of 
Woodstock, the sixth son of Edward III., his royal blood 
made him constantly fret against Wolsey's ^, ^^ , 

° "^ T he Duke of 

domination. His anger too was dangerous Buckingham 
from his powerful connections; for he had 
married the daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, 
Lord Surrey was his son-in-law, and Ursula the daughter 
of Lady Sahsburyhis daughter-in-law. He had offended 
the King as early as 1 509 by inducing Sir W. Bulmer to 
leave the royal service for his own, and had also excited 
suspicions at the Field of the Cloth of Gold ; charges 
were now brought against him by a steward named Knevet 
whom he had dismissed (detaining, it is said, his property 
unjustly), and by Sir Gilbert Parke his chancellor and 
others. By way of precaution Northumberland was 
arrested and Surrey sent to Ireland ; then the Duke him- 
self was summoned from Thornbury to London, and 
found that all along the road he. was watched by armed 
men at a distance. On arriving in London he tried in 
vain to see Wolsey, and was presently lodged in the 
Tower, On May 13 he was arraigned before the Lord 



142 The Early Tudors. 1521 

High Steward's Court ; and the depositions were read and 
asserted by the witnesses to be true. If so, they certainly 
amounted to treason according to the ideas of the time ; 
for the Duke had hstened to prophecies that he should 
soon be king, and rewarded them with valuable presents. 
This appeared to throw a new light on an attempt of his 
to get the King's sanction to a levy of troops which he 
thought of making on the Welsh border — perhaps also 
on some presents which he had made to the King's 
guardsmen. He was also sworn to have said that the 
death of the King's children was a judgment for the 
murder of Lord Warwick, and that, if questioned on the 
Bulmer affair, he would not hesitate to plunge his dagger 
into Henry's breast. Of course none of the trials of the 
time can inspire any real confidence, for the accused had 
no counsel, and could not cross-examine or bring counter- 
evidence ; and wherever the means of discovering truth 
were thus neglected it is impossible to believe that ' sub- 
stantial justice ' was generally or even frequently done. 
The Duke laboured under the farther difficulty that 
Henry had let it be known before the trial that he had 
gone through the evidence and considered him guilty. 
It is said that Buckingham admitted some of the charges 
while in the Tower ; at any rate when condemned he 
refused to ask for mercy, and on May 17 died as his 
father had died in 1483. Some of his estates were after- 
wards given back to his son Lord Henry Stafford, who 
was also allowed by Edward VI. to succeed to the barony 
of Stafford, from which his father had taken one of his 
tides. 

While the trial was proceeding, Francis had been 
pressing on the war in Italy, hoping to secure himself 
there while Charles was still embarrassed by the revolt of 
the Spanish cities. The Emperor therefore called for Eng- 



1 52 1 . The War of Pavia. 143 

lish help according to what was now acknowledged to 
have been the last year's agreement — namely, 

J ^ -I Henry s 

that England should help whichever of the treachery to 
two contending parties was first attacked 
by the other. On the plea that it was necessary to 
ascertain which was the aggressor, Wolsey was sent by 
way of Calais to the Netherlands, and his quasi-media- 
tion was made to occupy not less than four months, during 
which we were preparing for war, and Francis losing 
instead of gaining ground in Italy. On his return Henry 
gave him the rich Abbey of St. Albans in reward for his 
skilful tactics. And it seemed that these would also win 
him a far higher prize, inasmuch as the news of Pope 
Leo's death arrived towards the close of the year, and so 
recent a service to the Emperor was a strong claim on 
his support. But, in spite of all promises, Charles did 
very little in his favour, and the choice fell on Adrian of 
Utrecht, Charles's tutor, who was now enthroned as 
Adrian VI. It may be mentioned here that in the next 
Papal election (1523) Charles did write strongly in 
Wolsey's favour, but at the same time sent orders that 
the courier should be detained till the new Pope was 
chosen. 

The great French and Spanish war of 1521 was fierce 
and deadly beyond all precedent, aiming at nothing less 
than the complete dism.emberment of France. When 
Henry took the Spanish side openly in the following 
June, Francis was called upon to surrender to the Empe- 
ror Burgundy, Champagne, Dauphine, Lan- 
guedoc and Provence, and to Henry the Isle pavia^^^ °^ 
of France, Picardy, Normandy, and Guienne ; 
and of the brutalities committed by both invaders of 
France we may judge by the letters of Lord Surrey to his 
master, in which he calmly announces that ' the Boulon- 



144 The Early Tudors. 1523 

nais is so burned and ravaged that the French have good 
reason to be angry.' ' All the country,' he continues, ' that 
we have passed through has been burned, and all the 
strong places thrown down. When we have burned Dour- 
lens, Corby, Ancre, Bray, and the neighbouring country, I 
do not see that we can do much more. The Emperor's 
Council are willing that Hesdin should be burnt, which 
shall be done within three hours.' In 1523 Surrey was 
superseded and the army placed under the Duke of Suf- 
folk ; it approached within a few miles of Paris, but its 
sufferings from the severe winter were terrible, many sol- 
diers being frozen to death, and others losing their fingers 
or toes. It was impossible to persevere under such diffi- 
culties, and, for the second time in the reign, an 
English army went home without orders, having thus 
added another to the random and ineffective military 
operations which mark the period. The war went on with- 
out us, and produced many striking events, one of which 
was the capture of Francis I. by the Emperor's generals at 
Pavia. After relieving Marseilles from its siege by the 
Imperialists in the autumn of 1524, Francis had resolved 
on crossing M. Cenis and surprising Milan, which was 
defended by only 16,000 of Charles's troops. This he 
effected with signal success, the Spanish garrison re- 
treating to the Adda. Instead of pursuing and finish- 
ing the war on the spot, the French King occupied him- 
self for three whole months in besieging Pavia on the 
Tesino ; at the same time detaching 6,000 men to make 
a diversion on Naples, and thus leaving his army no more 
than equal to the enemy in numbers. In spite of this he 
held himself bound in honour to persist in the siege, 
because he had declared that he would reduce the place 
or die in the attempt. He was therefore attacked in his 
position by Charles's generals from the outside, while 



1524 " The War of Pavia. 145 

Leyva, the governor of the city, made a desperate sally 
from within. The double shock threw the French army 
into complete disorder ; first its Swiss mercenaries fled, 
then a well-arranged attack broke its cavalry. Francis 
himself lost his horse, and narrowly escaped being killed 
by some Spanish foot soldiers who did not recognise him. 
His ruin was complete; for ten thousand of his soldiers 
had fallen, and he himself had to bear a long and bitter 
captivity in Spain from which he was only released upon 
intolerably hard conditions. 

Among those who fell at Pavia was a leading member 
of the House of York, Richard de la Pole, the younger 
brother of the Lord Lincoln who fell at Stoke. Another 
consequence of the Pavia War was our being engaged in 
a new struggle with Scotland, to which Francis had again 
despatched the Duke of Albany (1521) in order to keep 
up the French interest there. Even Margaret herself 
now took that side, because Henry had refused to sanction 
her divorce from Angus, whom she had begun to detest 
most heartily. So when the King of England demanded 
Albany's expulsion, he was on the contrary placed at the 
head of an army of 60,000 men with a strong artillery, 
and sent to invade England. The old jealousy against 
his French companions, however, prevented anything im- 
portant from being done : the Scots failed in the siege of 
Wark Castle and then retreated. This opened the way 
for a more conciliatory policy ; Henry tried all means for 
gaining the affection of the young King his nephew, and 
even thought for a while of marrying him to his daughter 
Mary, so as to renew the old scheme of uniting the king- 
doms. But such a measure was too wise and wholesome 
for the times, and it was held to be enough for the present 
to raise up a party in Scotland which should declare 
James of full age and capable of governing. This plan 

K 



146 The Early Tiidors. 1524 

succeeded, and in August 1524 James appeared before his 
nobles with sceptre and crown, and undertook to rule the 
country ' with the advice of his most beloved mother and 
the Lords of the Council.' In the following November 
this step was sanctioned by an Act of the Scottish Parlia- 
ment, and the hopes of France in that country were for 
the present at an end. 

The wars at this time appear wanton and perverse 
in themselves, and much more so when we consider how 
impossible they made expeditions to which 
conquest of Europe was really bound by every tie of 
honour and interest. Henry VIII., like his 
father, was the official protector of the Knights of St. 
John, who had since 1 3 10 constantly made their island 
of Rhodes the outwork of Christendom in the East. Yet 
in 1523 he, in common with the other great Powers, 
allowed them to be besieged by the Sultan Soliman in 
person without raising a finger to help them. The events 
of the siege are admirably related by Nicholas Roberts, 
a member of the Order. The Turks had 1 50,000 men at 
least, and the besieged not more than 6,000, so that rest 
was almost impossible ; even the Grand Master, the 
noble risle Adam, slept as he best might upon the ground. 
Numbers of huge stone balls were fired into the city 
from the Turkish mortars, shattering as they fell with an 
effect like that of shells ; breaches were made over and 
over again, but as often repaired by the skill of the engi- 
neer Martinengo. After a while the Turks began a system 
of mines ; yet even when whole bastions were blown 
into the air the Knights continued to repulse the storming 
parties. But at length the enemy drove horizontal gal- 
leries 1 50 paces within the walls, and a breach was made 
which thirty horsemen could enter abreast ; then, and not 
till then, the place surrendei^ed, and was treated not 



1523 " The War of Pavia. 147 

ungenerously by the conqueror. Transferred by Charles V. 
in 1525 to the island of Malta, the Order within forty 
years recovered strength for the equally firm and more 
fortunate defence against their old enemies of the harbour 
and walls of Valetta, the capital of their new domain, 
which they continued to occupy till the island was taken 
by Napoleon in 1800. 

The French war, however useless and ineffective, had 
of course to be paid for by the people of England ; and 
Wolsey made in 1523 the terrible demand 
of twenty-six per cent, on real and personal tion in 
property, and of half a year's income from 
the clergy. It was estimated that this would produce 
about 800,000/. ; but the unwillingness to submit to such 
taxation was extreme. Wolsey himself came to the 
House of Commons to argue the point, and Sir Thomas 
More, who was Speaker, recommended the House to re- 
ceive him 'with all his pillar and pole-axe bearers.' 'The 
Cardinal,' he said, 'has been blaming us for not keeping 
our debates secret; we can turn the tables upon him if 
he brings his attendants into the House, and runs the risk 
of their making known what passes in it.' When the 
great minister had made his speech, there was a complete 
silence. On his asking More for a reply, he was told in 
the most respectful language that it was the manner of 
his Grace's faithful Commons to debate matters only 
among themselves, and that the Speaker, though trusted 
beyond his deserts by the House, could not venture to 
declare their views without an express commission from 
them. Except by this spirited declaration, More does 
not seem to have displeased the government by his 
conduct in the debate, and about half the sum demanded 
was voted by the House. An exemption was given to the 
northern counties which had borne the burthen of tho 



148 The Early Tudors. 1525 

Scottish war, and also to the district of Brighthelmstone 
in Sussex, doubtless because the place had been burned 
by the French in 15 14. Even with these deductions the 
pressure of the subsidy was simply ruinous, and when in 
1525 Wolsey farther proposed to raise what he called an 
' Amicable Loan,' England was brought to the verge of a 
Peasants' War like that which was horrifying Germany in 
the same year. The Kentishmen complained to Warham 
that as the subsidy of 1523 was not yet fully paid it was 
too bad to ask for more money already, and were not 
mollified by his reminder that 'his Majesty was born in 
Kent.' They wept, pleaded poverty, and then began to 
' speak cursedly ' ; ' there would be no rest from payments 
as long as some one lived.' Wolsey, it may be remarked, v/as 
already unpopular in that county for suppressing Tun- 
bridge Priory and devoting its funds to his new college 
in Oxford. Strong remonstrances also came from other 
quarters. The Bishop of Ely wrote to say that there was 
no ready money in his diocese, and that to procure it 
people had to sell their cattle at half its value ; in Nor- 
wich folks tendered their spoons and salt-cellars for want 
of cash, and there was every appearance that the cloth- 
makers would have to stop v/ork and dismiss their hands. 
In an interview with Wolsey, the Lord Mayor of London 
reminded him of Richard IJI.'s statute against benevo- 
lences, and failed to see the force of his reply that ' he 
wondered his Lordship should quote the law of a bad 
King who murdered his nephews, and who, being also an 
usurper, could not make laws binding a legitimate king.' 
But the end was that the Cardinal was struck with the 
arguments alleged, and himself persuaded Henry to 
allow people to give only what they chose. No one of 
course came forward, and the benevolence was heard 
of no more. Though Wolsey might have truly said that 



1527 . The War of Pavia. 149 

it had been no plan of his, yet his loyal silence left its un- 
popularity to weigh on him ; and at the same time the 
King was not less angry that the scheme had failed 
than the people were that it had been attempted. 

After the battle of Pavia the European war still went 
on in Italy, hence arose in 1527 one of the most frightful 
catastrophes of the Middle Ages. For the 
Constable Bourbon, having deserted his i<^^,ne° 
country to take the command of a mixed 
force belonging to Charles, found himself unable to pay 
his troops, and was obliged to connive at all their excesses. 
At last they forced him to attack Rome, and after two re- 
pulses made their way into the Leonine City at the back 
of St. Peter's ; as Bourbon himself was killed in the assault 
(perhaps by a shot from the celebrated sculptor Benvenuto 
Cellini) even the slight control which he might have exer- 
cised was at an end. The Pope and Cardinals just es- 
caped into the Castle of St. Angelo, and then had the gates 
closed against the crowd of distracted fugitives. For the 
twelve next days the city suffered the most indescribable 
horrors ; fanatical German Protestants, renegade Italians, 
and ruthless Spaniards vying with one another in the 
crimes which they committed, and the unhappy people 
being tortured by those of each nation in turn to make 
them produce the valuables of which they had already 
been robbed by the others. Clement VII., who had been 
elected Pope in 1523, remained the Emperor's prisoner 
in Rome till December, when he escaped in disguise to 
Orvieto. Even there he was far from free or safe, and 
the next chapters will show the important consequences 
to England of his quasi-captivity. 



150 The Early Tudors. 152 1 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE EARLY REFORMATION ABROAD. THE DIVORCE. 

FALL OF WOLSEY. 

152I-1530. 

The time was now at hand when differences on religion, 
which had for many years only shghtly influenced EngHsh 

State affairs, were to become all-powerful both 
PapaUa'ws "^ changing the character of the nation and 

in breaking up society into new party combi- 
nations. England was to recall all the memories of 
former struggle with the Popes, and to consolidate them 
into a system of permanent revolt. The existing laws 
against Papal encroachment were neither few nor unim- 
portant. The Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), as long 
as they were in force, had prohibited appeals to Rome 
without the royal consent. Edward I.'s outlawry of the 
clergy and the execution of Archbishop Scrope in 1405 
had proved that priesfs were not inviolable ; and of the 
three great statutes of Richard II., that of Mortmain 
(1391) limited the Church's power of acquiring property, 
that of Provisors (1390) protected our benefices from 
being filled up by the Pope, and that of Praemunire (1393) 
vindicated the power of the State to exclude Bulls. More- 
over a statute of 1395 forbade the exercise in England of 
any jurisdiction derogatory to the King's. England too 
was inclined to the anti-Papal party- on the Continent, 
and had been represented at the Council of Constance, 
which exercised the power of deposing Popes ; by no 
means, however, endorsing its act in murdering John 



1 52 1 The Early Reformation. 151 

Hus, the disciple of her own Wiclif, as was shown by the 
already noticed escape from a furious London mob of the 
Emperor Sigismund, who had given and broken Hus's 
safe-conduct. After this, English opposition to Papal 
claims had flagged for a time ; France had sided with the 
reforming Council of Basle in 143 1, and this had been 
thought a sufficient reason for our taking the other side. 
Thus was shown the inherent weakness of a mere political 
opposition in religious matters. It was liable at any 
moment to collapse, because while the Papal practice 
was unvarying, the ebbs and flows of State affairs were 
constantly suggesting fresh combinations which made 
the help of Rome desirable, and therefore induced kings 
to purchase it by concessions and by starving Church re- 
form in the manner described in Chapter VI. Public fury 
might be roused for awhile by some instance of clerical 
exaction or immorality ; but when the burst of feeling 
had spent itself things were apt to settle down into just 
their former condition. There was as yet no deep-seated 
and. burning persuasion that such evils sprang from a root 
of falsehood, and would end only when its last fibres were 
torn- from the soil. 

Fortunately for the world, however, some of the best 
intellects living had now for years been concentrating 
themselves on religious thought. The sim- Forerunners 
pie goodness of John Hus had naturally made of the Re- 

, . . , . , . , , formation. 

a deep impression, which was increased by Doctrine of 
the unparalleled infamy of his murder ; and 
at the end of the fifteenth century his disciples, under the 
name of the ' Brothers of Unity,' still formed 200 churches 
in Bohemia. In 1489 this body decided that ' if God any- 
where raised up faithful doctors and reformers of the 
Church, they, for their part, would make common cause 
with them ; ' nor did they fail to keep their promise 



152 The Early Tudor s. 1521 

when the time came. Elsewhere similar associations were 
formed on semi-catholic principles ; as in the Nether- 
lands by the so-called ' Brothers of the Common Lot ' 
(to which belonged Thomas a Kempis, the celebrated 
author of the ' Imitation of Christ '). These good men 
lived together in voluntary communities without vows, 
and devoted themselves to preaching, to the instruction of 
the young in Latin and Greek, and to the transcription and 
printing of books. They held that the Bible contains a 
sound and simple doctrine accessible to all, and evident 
of itself to any reader without great pains or learned 
controversy. It is, therefore, they thought, open to all, 
and should not be forbidden — a doctrine which drew on 
them the strongest opposition from the Mendicant Friars, 
who were also aggrieved at their being only half-monks, 
and accepting the rule of no Order. In England there 
were still relics here and there of an even exagger- 
ated Lollardism ; as in the ten inhabitants of Tenterden 
who were summoned before Warham in 1 5 1 1 for main- 
taining that the elements are mere bread and wine, re- 
jecting baptism, holding confirmation and confession to 
be needless, and refusing extreme unction, pilgrimages, 
and saint-worship. Sometimes eminent foreign teachers, 
though remaining in communion with the Church, aimed 
at nothing short of a revolution in theology. Such was 
John of Goch, who abo.ut the year 1470 boldly called 
Thomas Aquinas the ' prince of error,' and was before 
Erasmus in maintaining that monastic vows are so far 
from indicating a higher religious standard, that they are 
tolerable only as supports to those who cannot do their 
duty without them. With still greater boldness the 
celebrated Wessel, who died in 148 1, had maintained 
that the ' treasure of good works ' has not been left 
to be distributed by Papal Indulgences on earth, since 



1 52 1 The Early Reformation. 153 

Scripture says of the dead that ' their works do follow 
them.' He had also taught that the Fathers' inter- 
pretations of the Bible are not the work of the Holy 
Spirit ; that the monastic state is not favourable to 
salvation ; and that Christ has left no vicegerent on 
earth. All this shows us how open men's minds had 
long been to the notion of deeply-seated Church abuses, 
and how ready the world was for thinkers like Erasmus, 
especially for those of his works which simplified Bible 
interpretation. It is highly remarkable that the starting- 
point of all wholesomer ideas of religion was both in 
England and abroad that preference for family over 
monastic life which made Sir Thomas More's house- 
hold what it was, which dictated, as we have seen, 
Colet's arrangements for the government of his school, 
and which formed so large a part of the teaching of 
Erasmus, Goch, Wessel, and Luther. It was not acci- 
dent but the very spirit of the time which made the 
young Luther in his cell at Erfurt dwell with such 
delight on the history of Hannah and Samuel, and 
declare that he wanted no more happiness than to be 
always reading of such fathers, mothers, and children. 
The notion being once conceived that the very ideal of 
holiness had been distorted in this main point, many 
farther steps were easy;, might not other Church maxims 
be equally groundless, such, for instance, as the power of 
priestly absolution apart from real change and enlighten- 
ment of the soul ? And, above all, might it not be true 
that all the evils and superstitions of the Church had 
sprung from forgetfulness of the true old religion, that of 
enthusiasm, the religion of St. Paul and of Augustine, 
which looked for justification not in anything which we 
do or can do, but in faith only, a strong and converting 
faith founded on denial of self and the acceptance of 



154 The Early Tit dors. 152 1 

Christ's redemption ? This and this alone, Luther began 
to think, could give value to the moral life by quickening 
and spiritualising action. Our deeds are accepted not 
for anything in themselves, but in proportion' as they 
express and as it were utter this faith. Hence all 
merely formal modes of obtaining God's favor appeared 
to Luther anti-Christian; consequently when in 15 17 the 
Pope's agent, Tetzel, ventured to offer Indulgences for 
sale close to his own parish of Wittemberg, he could not 
but make his celebrated protest, as Hus had done before 
him. For the theory of these documents was the very 
antithesis to that on which he considered all religion to be 
founded ; according to them something of the nature of 
a spiritual gift might be obtained without any spiritual 
condition whatever. They did not indeed profess to 
take away sin — this belonged to the Power of the Keys, 
which was different from that of Indulgence — but they 
did assert that any one in the outward communion of 
the Church might, by paying a small sum, and (it v/as 
expressly said) without any other condition, obtain parti- 
cipation in all good works done by the Church Militant, 
and also the relief of departed souls from purgatory. By 
1520 Luther, having much cleared and strengthened his 
views by the study of Greek, had farther come to maintain 
that both Councils and Fathers might err concerning 
doctrine, and was expressing his high admiration for 
Melanchthon, who denied transubstantiation and the 
sacerdotal theory. He also saw objections to the seven 
sacraments of the Roman Church, and treated the 
Pope's infallibility as an arrogant pretension. In that 
year he also declared against auricular confession and 
the refusal of the Cup to the laity, published in October 
his book on the ' Babylonish Captivity ' of the Church, and. 
on the loth of December burned at the gate of Wittemberg 



1521 . The Early Reformation. 155 

the Pope's Bull of condemnation. On April 19th, 1521, 
he appeared by the Emperor's command before the Diet 
at Worms, and declined to retract his theological opinions 
unless convinced out of the Bible ; thus creating among 
the German princes a strong enthusiasm in his favour. 
He was, indeed, by the single act of Charles placed 
under the ban of the Empire ; yet in spite of much 
pressure from those who wished to repeat the Constance 
tragedy by burning the new heretic and throwing his 
ashes into the Rhine, his safe-conduct was not violated 
as that of Hus had been. A few weeks later the Elector 
of Saxony, his own sovereign, had no difficulty in arresting 
him coUusively and concealing him in the safe retreat of 
the Wartburg, a castle close to Eisenach. 

Before the end of 1521 Henry VIII. wrote his book 
on the Seven Sacraments in answer to Luther's ' Baby- 
lonish Captivity,' and for this Pope Leo gave 
him the title of ' Defender of the Faith.' The Defender of 
King, it seems, considered that the new 
doctrines were making their way in his own kingdom, 
and was thus stimulated to authorship. It is certain 
that Luther's works were read in Oxford and elsewhere 
at the time; for Archbishop Warham as Chancellor 
thought it necessary in the same year to order a search 
for them in the University. Similar enquiries were set 
on foot in the diocese of Hereford, and Bishop Fisher 
preached an anti-Lutheran sermon in St. Paul's, at 
which some German merchants had to do penance for 
eating meat on Friday. Henry uses against the here- 
siarch the customary arguments : Was it conceivable 
that not only Pope Leo, whose character was so high, but 
all other holy Popes were in error when they enjoined 
Indulgences? and was the Church to believe that so 
many teachers, by whom and at whose graves miracles 



156 The Early Tudors. 1526 

had been done, should be after all in error as to the 
Papal power, and that a mere ' fraterculus ' was born 
to set them right. Considering the resemblance of 
these arguments to the after-reasonings of Sir Thomas 
More there is no reason to doubt the statement that 
at least one illustrious convert was brought over to a 
belief in the Pope's supremacy by the very controversialist 
who was afterwards to behead him for retaining it. 

So far as it could be proved by zeal in controversy, 
Henry's orthodoxy may therefore be considered as be- 
yond question. As he had fought for the 
of the Pope in the days of the Holy League, so he 

question. argued for him now. But ' all these fences 

and their strong array ' were to be scattered 
to the winds by one violent temptation. His wife Queen 
Katherine had for some time been distasteful to him from 
age and other reasons ; and either the remembrance of 
the secret protest which his father had caused him to make 
against his betrothal in 1496 or some other evil suggestion 
brought to his mind the notion that his marriage had 
been unlawful from the first. It has been maintained that 
the first hint came in 1 526 from the Bishop of Tarbes, who 
in one of the manifold negotiations for the Princess 
Mary's marriage had expressed some doubts of her 
legitimacy. It is not, however, uncharitable to say that 
dates prove passion and not policy to have suggested 
the notion. For from the time when the young and 
beautiful Anne Boleyn appeared at Court in 1522 on her 
return from France, her father. Sir Thomas Boleyn, had 
received a shower of honours and profitable employments 
such as nothing but a strong fancy on the King's part for 
his daughter would be enough to account for. It is 
therefore superfluous to discuss Henry's alleged qualms 
of conscience as to his marriage, and his misgivings that 



1527 ■ The Divorce. 157 

God had warned him of its unlawfulness by the death of 
so many of his children in infancy. However strong and 
even sincere these may have become at last, their first 
origin is perfectly plain. Wolsey seems first to have 
realised the King's intentions in 1527; and the Cardinal's 
manner of seconding them justly earned all the mis- 
fortunes which it afterwards brought upon him. He first 
advised Henry to put away Katherine by his own au- 
thority, giving as a reason that she had been married to 
Arthur in facie ecclesice, and that after this no more could 
be said — she could not thenceforward be her brother-in- 
law's wife, all appearances notwithstanding. As the King 
thought this plan likely to fail, Wolsey next lent himself to 
a shameless mockery of law, coUusively citing the King 
to appear before himself as Legate and Warham, and to 
answer for his misdemeanour in cohabiting with his sister- 
in-law for eighteen years. The idea seems to have been 
that this might be enough to make Katherine yield at 
once ; as she never thought of such an act of weakness, 
the hypocritical procedure came to an end of itself, and 
it then became necessary to appeal to the Pope, since 
Katherine certainly would at last. It seemed for many 
reasons safe to do so, for such a supporter of the Papacy as 
Henry would surely not be refused. Nor were precedents 
hard to find either abroad or at home. Both the daughters 
of Louis XI. had been divorced ; and in Scotland Henry's 
own sister had since 1 526 been striving not unsuccessfully 
to be set free from her husband Lord Angus on the 
impudent plea that James IV. was not killed at Flodden, 
but lived till after her second marriage. Moreover the 
first nobleman at the English Court, the Earl of Suffolk, 
had, as Mr. Brewer remarks, twice committed bigamy 
and been three times divorced, his first wife having 
been his aunt and his last his daughter-in-law. With 



158 The Early Tudors. 1527 

such instances full in view, what fear could there be of 
failure ? 

- But Wolsey had neglected to allow for the one decisive 
circumstance that Pope Clement had been taken prisoner 
by Charles's army just a month before Henry thought 
of applying to him, and that, if he decided against the 
Emperor's aunt, there was every chance of a second sack 
of Rome. The unhappy pontiff tried to gain time by 

twice sending dispensations which would not 
to^England work ; and it was only on a third embassy from 

England that something like an agreement 
was arrived at. In order that Wolsey might not bear the 
whole odium of the transaction, Cardinal Campeggio was 
to act as Papal Commissioner along with him. Even thus 
much concession was dangerous to the Pope ; besides 
which there was no little fear of disorder in England, 
where the sound instincts of the people were all for 
Katherine and passionately against her rival. An un- 
popular war with Charles was plainly in the air ; for Henry 
had sent him a defiance on hearing of the sack of Rome, 
and had forced Wolsey once more to transfer the English 
staple to Calais. All this threw trade into still further 
disorder, and that just at a time when several harvests 
had been bad. The cloths of Essex, Kent, Wiltshire, 
Suffolk, and other counties found no sale. Formidable 
disturbances again arose in Kent; the rioters declaring 
that they would seize the Cardinal and place him on the 
sea in a leaky boat. The continued suppression of small 
monasteries had added to his unpopularity, as had also 
the search which he had ordered for Lutheran books ; 
nor was he in high favour even with Henry himself, 
having offended him, apparently through inadvertence, 
with regard to a trifling appointment in which Anne 
Boleyn was interested. There was also difficulty in 



1528 • The Divorce. 159 

finding an opportunity of justifying himself, since Henry, 
in alarm at finding Anne attacked with the sweating 
sickness, was hurrying from one house to another in 
unkingly fear for his own safety. 

On arriving in London (October 17, 1528) Campeggio 
discussed a proposal that the Queen should retire to a 
religious house, on condition that if no son was born 
from any other marriage, her daughter should succeed to 
the throne ; but Katherine would not hear of the ar- 
rangement. He then intimated that he must r mn^i-g,- „ 
report to the Pope before he judged the case ; of Cam- 

. . peggio- 

in fact he was being constantly urged by no 
means to omit this, as the Emperor was advancing on 
Italy and a false step might be ruinous. Meanwhile 
Katherine's enemies were plotting against her in many 
ways ; her Flemish advocates were ordered to leave the 
kingdom before the trial ; she was accused of popularising 
herself and thus causing conspiracies against her husband ; 
attempts were made to get away from her a paper most 
important to her cause ; it was threatened that her daughter 
should not be allowed to see her ; and Mary's establish- 
ment was broken up on pretence of economy, while Anne 
was brought to live in the Palace. All the time Campeg- 
gio did not tell even Wolsey what his commission from 
the Pope really was ; but, as this reserve was not generally 
known, delays were attributed to the minister, and his 
power began to crumble under him. Things got still 
worse when seven months passed without any step being 
taken towards a decision. At length the case took a 
more definite shape ; for Charles being manifestly re- 
solved on supporting his aunt to the uttermost, the 
Pope was obliged to receive Katherine's protest against 
her judges, and determined on revoking the cause — that 
is, on reserving it for his own consideration. It therefore 



l6o The Early Tudors. 1529 

became an object for the promoters of the divorce to get 
the Legatine Court held in London before the revocation 
arrived; and it was opened on the 21st of June, 1529. At 
this session the well-known scene took place ; the Queen 
knelt at Henry's feet, besought him to have pity on her 
as a poor woman and a stranger born out of his do- 
minions, and urged him to consider her own honour and 
her daughter's, and that of the Spanish nation and her 
relatives. Finally she informed him and the assembly 
that she had appealed directly to the Pope, before whom 
it was only reasonable that the cause should be decided, 
without paitiality or suspicion : to Rome only would she 
make her answer. She then left the room, and being 
thrice summoned in vain to return, was declared ' con- 
tumacious.' The next sessions of the Court were for 
taking evidence ; on the 28th the aged Bishop Fisher, 
the faithful servant of Henry's family for three genera- 
tions, appeared to maintain that Katherine's marriage was 
indissoluble, seeing that every defect in its legality had 
been made good by dispensations which the Pope was 
perfectly competent to give. He ended by putting in 
for the information of the Court a book which he had 
written on the subject. Great was the astonishment at 
this act of boldness, and at the fervour and eloquence 
with which the old man pressed his view. The judges 
replied, lamely enough, that it was not his business to 
pronounce so decidedly on the cause, as it had not been 
committed to him ; but Henry himself made up for all 
deficiencies by a reply still extant, which bears unques- 
tionable marks of the royal style. ' I never thought, 
Judges,' says this document, 'to see the Bishop of 
Rochester taking upon himself the task of accusing me 
before your tribunal — an accusation more befitting the 
malice of a disaffected subject and the unruly passions 



1529 - The Divorce. 161 

of a seditious mob than the character and station of 
a bishop. Why has he kept silence for so many 
months, and then declared his opinion thus unseason- 
ably ? It would have been more dutiful to begin by 
private admonition, and thus avoid discrediting both 
the King who is pressing for the divorce and the Pope 
who has been entertaining the question. And what 
need was there to talk of maintaining the truth even 
to the fire, as if any harsh measures had ever been 
taken, or were likely to be taken, against the Queen's 
defenders ? ' 

Through the greater part of July the cause dragged 
on, Campeggio getting constantly more and more un- 
willing to decide it, because the Emperor's agents were 
constantly pressing the Pope in opposition to Henry's 
wishes, and thus keeping him, as he said, ' between the 
hammer and the anvil.' Tlie 23d of July was at last ap- 
pointed for the decision ; and Heniy was present to hear 
it. To his utter disgust, Campeggio only said that the 
Roman Courts always had vacation from the end of July 
to the beginning of October, and that he must therefore 
adjourn the case till the next term began. As July was 
not yet over, this of course signified that the sentence, if 
given in London, would require a farther process at Rome ; 
and it more than implied that the Legatine Court was 
now sitting for the last time, seeing that the revocation 
v/ould certainly arrive before October. ' No good ever 
came of Cardinals in England ! ' cried Suffolk with an 
oath. 'You at least should not say so,' rejoined Wolsey 
quietly, ' for, Cardinal as I am, your head would have 
fallen on the scaffold but for me !' But in spite of this 
spirited reply, he knew well that the words just spoken 
by Campeggio were the signal for his destruction ; and 
it was not long before the tempest was upon him. 

L 



i62 The Early Tudors. 1529 

The attack took the strange form of a prosecution 
directed against him by royal permission in the Court 

of King's Bench for having exercised, in vio- 
Woisey. lation of the statute of 1395 already refen-cd 

to, thelcgatine jurisdiction which Henry had 
Invoked ; and this involved a writ of pramimire with tlie 
forfeiture of all his property to the King. Nor was Henry 
restrained by any feelings of honour or delicacy from 
pressing his claim to the uttermost, though the case was 
much as if Charles I. had of himself broken with Strafford 
and taken pains to get him prosecuted for the illegal 
things which they had done and planned together, or 
George III. punished Lord North for his own obstinate 
enmity to America. The Cardinal was ordered at once 
to give up the Great Seal, which passed, much shorn of its 
power, into the hands of Sir Thomas More ; the Dukes 
of Norfolk and Suffolk, as President and Vice-President 
of the Council, were to do much of whathadbeen Wolsey's 
work. His experience of his master induced him to sub- 
mit at once, and to sign a paper confessing that he had 
vexed many of the King's subjects by his proceedings as 
Legate, and deserved to suffer imprisonment at the royal 
pleasure ; he accordingly prayed Henry to take into his 
hands all his temporal possessions and benefices. His 
reason for thus abandoning all defence was, as he after- 
wards explained, that Henry, after once getting possession 
of his property, would do anything, however harsh, rather 
than resign if again ; consequently, even if he were 
acquitted on this charge, others would be brought against 
him, and, if found guilty on any one of them, he would 
certainly be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Having 
arranged for the delivery to the royal officers of York 
Place (the modern Whitehall) and all that it contained, the 
Cardinal went by water to Putney on the way to Esher, to 



1529 - Fall of Wo Is ey. 163 

which he had been ordered to withdraw ; and thousands 
of boats thronged the river to see the outward signs of 
the great minister's fall. At Esher he remained almost 
destitute for some weeks, paying his servants' wages 
with money borrowed from his chaplains. But even 
while thus degraded and impoverished, he was hardly 
less formidable to his enemies than when his power was at 
the highest. So well known was his administrative talent, 
that it hardly required Henry's frequent taunts as to the 
blundering way in which business was now done to make 
Norfolk and Suffolk apprehend that on the first great 
emergency he would be recalled to office and revenge him- 
self on those who had ill-treated him. Accordingly they 
fretted him continually with small affronts, hoping that he 
might thus be goaded to some unseemliness of language 
or action. Day by day he was either informed of some 
new charge against him or robbed of more property. 
We read with amazement that, just after a cheering 
message which Henry sent him at Christmas when he 
was seriously ill, the Council persuaded the King that a 
gallery lately erected at Esher would be a suitable orna- 
ment for the palace at Westminster, and that accordingly 
the work was torn away before its owner's face. A Bill 
was pressed on in Parliament making him incapable of 
serving the Crown ; but it fell through at the prorogation. 
The next best thing was to banish him as far as possible 
from Henry's presence; and with this object the Council 
refused his request to be allowed to retire to Winchester, 
and insisted that he should go to York, ' the place from 
which he had his honour.' Winchester was given to 
Gardiner, except a pension of 1,000/. a year for Wolsey. 
At the same time the courtiers secured for themselves a 
number of assignments out of his other benefices, and 
the King tried very hard to secure that his pensions 



164 The Early Tudor s. 1530 

from foreign Powers should for the future be paid to him- 
self. On the I2th of February, 1530, a formal pardon was 
given him, together with about 6,000/. of his property. 
As soon as the roads were fit for travelling, he started 
for the north (April 15) by way of Royston, Peterborough, 
and Southwell, the last a dependency on the see of 
York. Both on the way and during his short residence at 
Southwell the goodwill of the gentry towards him was 
strongly manifested. Sir William Fitzwilliams, whom he 
had supported in a struggle against the Corporation of 
London, received him at his house near Peterborough 
with the most generous affection. In starting from 
Southwell he had to rise before day to escape from the 
friendliness of those who wished ' to lodge a great stag or 
twain ' for his amusement by the way. His first occu- 
pation on arriving at his own seat of Cawood Castle was 
to hold a confirmation of children, which he continued, 
like Wulstan of old, till he almost dropped with exhaustion. 
He also succeeded in setting at rest a feud between two 
neighbouring gentry, expostulating not with them only 
but with their turbulent retainers. He listened with 
kindness to the claim of the Dean and Canons that he 
should not enter the choir of Yorkminster till he was 
formally installed as Archbishop, but directed that the 
ceremony should be less magnificent than they had 
intended — refusing, in particular, to have cloth laid down 
as usual from the city gate to the cathedral. Of all the trials 
inflicted on him the hardest to bear was the treatment 
of his colleges. As he had founded them before the 
pramunire, the Judges held unanimously that they had 
lapsed to the Crown ; therefore the King confiscated the 
property of that at Ipswich, and seemed inclined to do 
the same with regard to Cardinal College or Christchurch, 
Oxford. For this noble foundation Wolsey pleaded in a 



1530 ■ Fall of Wolsey. 165 

tone which he had ceased to use for his own sake. About 
the same time the college authorities, on appealing to the 
King, were angrily reminded by him that several of their 
members had been against the divorce ; and the Duke of 
Norfolk told them that their foundation would be dis- 
solved and the buildings pulled down. However they 
managed to avert the storm (fees to courtiers being, as 
they said in confidence, a ' chief means ' of effecting what 
they wished), and the King at last consented that Christ- 
church should retain a portion of its endowments ; it 
was, he said, perhaps with more wisdom than is generally 
recognised, not for the welfare of the kingdom that it 
should be completed on the splendid scale planned by 
the Cardinal. But before this matter was brought to a 
close its great founder was dead. To understand the 
last events of his life it is necessary to go back a few 
weeks. Shortly after leaving Esher he had made a rash 
attempt, through Du Bellay the French ambassador, to 
secure the inteixession of Francis I. His message to 
Du Bellay was sent by Agostino, an Italian physician in 
whom he had great confidence. But this man, having 
received from Norfolk a bribe of 100/. to betray his 
master, revealed Wolsey's secret mission, which was 
interpreted into a wish to bring about political changes 
for his own interest ; nor were suspicions wanting that 
he was urging the Pope to excommunicate Henry 
unless he parted with Anne. Yet it may be questioned 
whether, according to the ideas of the time, what he had 
actually done would not have been held to justify the 
harshest measures ; for the crime of asking for the 
intercession of a foreign prince was the same for which 
in 1456 Giacopo Foscari was racked at Venice thirty 
times in the presence of his aged father the Doge. 
Intercession meant interference, and, as we shall see 



1 66 The Early Tudors. 1530 

in another chapter, was considered a form of aggres- 
sion. 

Cavendish gives a complete account of Wolsey's arrest, 
which he himself witnessed. It was effected by the young 
Earl of Northumberland, who had been 
and death' brought up in his household, but had become 
his enemy on receiving a reprimand for mis- 
conduct in the North. Wolsey was not allowed to see 
the warrant ; it contained, Northumberland said, ' secret 
matters which were not to be made known to him.' On 
the next day the prisoner was sent southward under the 
care of Sir Roger Lascelles, the Earl remaining behind 
at Cawood to search for papers, and, once more, to take 
an inventory of his effects. At the end of the third day's 
journey the party reached Sheffield Park, where Lord 
Shrewsbury received the Cardinal with great respect, and 
tried to persuade him that the King would certainly com- 
ply with his request and give him a personal hearing. But 
on learning that Sir W. Kingston, the Lieutenant of the 
Tower, had come to take charge of him, Wolsey thought 
the very name so ominous as to outweigh all the Earl's 
encouragements. ' I perceive, he said, ' more than you 
can imagine or know ; experience of old hath taught me.' 
Nor was he more cheered when Kingston told him of the 
King's belief that he would clear himself of all charges ; 
' such comfortable words were intended only to bring 
him into a fool's paradise.' Meantime a dysentery had 
been coming on, and his strength was failing. Yet he 
held on for three days longer, and by way of Hardwick, 
Hall and Nottingham arrived at Leicester Abbey. On 
tlie next morning Kingston found him too weak to be 
questioned, according to orders, about a sum of 1,500/, 
which should have been at Cawood, but had not been 
found ; Henry being concerned that the money should 



1529 . The Early Reformation. 167 

be ' embezzled away from both of us.' In the course of 
the same day occurred the celebrated conversation with 
Sir W. Kingston, containing a character of Henry VIII. 
of which every true history of the reign must be an ex- 
pansion. ' He is a prince of royal courage, and hath a 
princely heart ; and rather than he will miss or want 
part of his appetite, he will hazard the loss of one-half 
of his kingdom. I assure you I have often kneeled before 
him in his privy-chamber the space of an hour or two, to 
persuade him from his will and appetite, but I could 
never dissuade him.' Sad to relate, Wolsey's last message 
to his master contained an earnest entreaty ' that he 
would have a vigilant eye upon this new pernicious sect 
of Lutherans,' which, if allowed to grow up unheeded, 
might enact over again in England the horrors of the 
Hussite war in Bohemia. His whole administration, like 
that of Richelieu in after-time, had been marked by a 
scornful neglect of merely theological questions. At this 
supreme moment worldliness resigned its sway ; yet in 
favour, alas ! not of true religion, but of the persecuting 
spirit. Had he lived longer to carry out such views of 
the religious life, all England might have had cause to 
regret the day when he began ' to serve God as faithfully 
as he had served his King.' He died on the 29th Novem- 
ber just as the clock struck eight — the very hour which 
he had foretold would be his last. 

Within a week of Wolsey's condemnation by the Court 
of King's Bench met the celebrated Reformation Parlia- 
ment of 1529. Unlike its forerunners in the 
reign, it was to be carried on in successive Reforming 
sessions till 11:36, because, beinsr made up Pnriiament. 
almost entirely of the King's servants, it was aRuinst the 

1 • • '^ clergy 

ready implicitly to follow his lead against the 

clerical body, which had as a whole been opposed to the 



1 68 The Early Tudor s. 1529 

divorce. The House of Commons began, evidently ac- 
cording to arrangement, with a petition complaining that 
Convocation often made, without reference to the Crown 
or to any civil authority, laws and ordinances against the 
King's prerogative, as well as vexatious and oppressive 
to the people. Among the resulting grievances they men- 
tioned the long journeys which had to be made by 
persons cited to the Archbishops' Courts, the money often 
charged for the administration of the sacraments, the 
vexations of summoners and informers, the questions 
asked in the Church Courts to entrap people into heresy, 
and the abuse of conferring benefices on children. This 
paper Henry sent to Archbishop Warham, calling on him 
for a reply, and at the same time directing Parliament to 
prepare Bills remedying the grievances of which they 
complained. After laying the paper before the Bishops, 
Warham made a singular reply in their name. They 
made laws, he said, only according to the warrant of 
Holy Scripture and the Catholic Church, consequently 
it would be only right that the King should ' temper his 
own laws into conformity ' with these. Although, he con- 
tinues, ' we may not submit the execution of our duty 
prescribed to us by God to your Highness's assent, yet 
we most humbly desire your Grace to show your mind 
and opinion to us, which we shall most gladly hear and 
follow, if it shall please God to inspire us to do so.' This 
meant in brief that the clergy legislated in religious 
matters, though the civil power might advise them ; a 
view which did not show any profound knowledge of 
English constitutional precedents. The Archbishop laid 
down in the later paragraphs of his answer that open 
penance for sin may rightly be commuted for money 
where it is desirable to maintain the party's good fame ; 
that severity must be used to repress the beginnings of 



1529 - The Early Reformation. 169 

Lutheranism in England ; that witnesses even of bad 
character should be received in such prosecutions if their 
tale is likely; that the jurisdiction of the Archbishops 
had been exercised for centuries and ought to be so still, 
in spite of the inconveniences to those cited out of the 
dioceses in which they lived; and that when a quite 
young person is appointed to a benefice, its income may 
properly be spent for his education. Such an answer 
proved that the clerical mind was running in a groove of 
its own, and unlikely to understand the statesman's view 
of things ; especially when it was considered what kind 
of a comment upon the Archbishop's principles was 
furnished by familiar aspects of Church rule — here an 
ignoble squabble about the coverlet of a man just dead, 
there an arbitrary increase of tithes, elsewhere a fine of a 
few shillings inflicted on a clergyman as sufficient pun- 
ishment for a grave delinquency ; so that, as Warham 
himself complains, priests were hooted in the streets 
or knocked into the kennel. Obviously, therefore, no 
question more required settlement than whether Church 
or State law was to be supreme ; and this was soon 
decided by a stratagem which in a moment turned the 
defences of the ecclesiastics — suggested, as it is said, by 
Cromwell, a servant of Wolsey's, who after his fall had 
become the King's secretary, having earned golden 
opinions by his bold defence of his master in Parliament. 
Henry suddenly announced that the whole body of the 
clergy had subjected themselves to prcemunire, with its 
two consequences of imprisonment and forfeiture of goods, 
by acknowledging Wolsey's legatine jurisdiction. They 
might reply that they had done so only as all England 
had, and as the King had ordered them ; indeed it 
seems strange that a body of men not wanting in spirit 
failed to see that consequences could not easily be en- 



lyo The Early Tudor s. 1531 

forced against them if they showed an even front and 
stated their case well. As it was, the audacity of the 
charge seemed to strike Convocation with a kind of panic, 
and they consented to pay 119,000/. as a fine for their 
misdemeanour. But over and above this they were, under 
the same penalty, to acknowledge the King's supremacy in 
Church affairs, which would plainly involve the abandon- 
ment of their claim to make canons without his permission. 
Convocation voted the subsidy on the 24th of January, 1531, 
and a fortnight later the King was most reluctantly recog- 
nised as ' the singular protector and only supreme gov- 
ernor of the English Church, and, as far as the law of Christ 
permits, its supreme head.' On the 1 3th of May, 1 532, they 
agreed, for themselves and their successors, to frame no 
new canons without the royal license ; and farther con- 
sented that whatever in the existing body of Church law 
' appeared not to stand with God's law ' should be abro- 
gated by the united action of King and clergy. For the 
present nothing was expressly said about the power of 
the Pope, inasmuch as Clement might possibly still decide 
on the marriage as the King wished. 

The act of Convocation was not quite unresisted by 
the general body of the clergy. As to the fine, they 
. vainly argued that it ought to be paid only by 

of the clergy those who had done things really acknowledg- 
ing the legatine jurisdiction — that is, only by 
the bishops and superior clergy ; and on the other point 
a protest was numerously signed against any interference 
with Church liberties or the Pope's authority. At Rome 
itself the enforced submission of the Church was treated 
as a revolt on Henry's part ; therefore all delays were 
put aside, and he was informed (May 31, 1531) that the 
revoked cause would at once be reopened there, and 
that the Court would proceed to a decision whether 



1 531 • More and Fisher. 171 

he appeared or no. Before the session of 1529-30 ended, 
Parliament passed Bills for the reduction of the pro- 
bate duty and the partial abolition of mortuaries — that 
is, of the offensive perquisites claimed by the clergy on 
the death of a parishioner. Another Bill was to restrain 
clerical trading and farming, with pluralities and non- 
residence ; but this was shown to press so hard upon 
many of the poorer incumbents that it was passed only 
in a mitigated form. Such was the first session of the 
celebrated Parliament of 1529, which was to be continued, 
session after session, till 1536, ready to pass, suspend, or 
recall measures according to the royal word of command, 
yet on the whole deserving our gratitude for much of the 
work which it accomplished. For the evil attending its 
measures at the time has long been purged away from 
Church and State ; while the good has ' grown with our 
growth and strengthened with our strength.' 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MORE AND FISHER. 
1531-1535- 

As the year 1531 proceeded, things began to appear as if 
Henry might possibly shake off his ignoble bondage. The 
insolence of the favourite alienated many of 
her friends, while others when promoted be- ^e^uni'versi- 
came far less inclined than before to hazard *j?^ °" ''^"^ 

divorce. 

anything for her. Both her father and her 
uncle the Duke of Norfolk began to fear the results iti 
popular anger if they sanctioned the marriage. Ev.mI 
some of Henry's agents at Rome, while seeming to prclk^f5ik . 
the Pope hard, were privately conjuring him to remain ^* 



172 The Early Tudors. 1531 

firm ; the cause, they said, ought to be heard at Rome and 
decided in favour of Katherine, and Henry would cer- 
tainly give way if the Pope persisted. The King still saw 
his wife sometimes, and, curiously enough, used to refer 
to her when his wardrobe required attention. It seemed 
more than doubtful whether he would long endure being 
rated by his mistress for timidity in not putting obstacles 
aside, and above all for not holding his own in disputes 
with Katherine on her marriage. Warham was dying 
and repentant for former concessions ; there was there- 
fore no hope of assistance from him. Anne herself ap- 
peared to be providing for adversity ; she was created 
Marchioness of Pembroke, and property was settled upon 
her and the heirs of her body ' whether legitimate or not,' so 
that it appeared as if she might soon be a mere discarded 
mistress. She was to go with Henry to meet Francis I. 
near Calais ; but there was a world of difficulty in procur- 
ing either English ladies to attend or French ladies of 
any character to meet her. Indeed any French alliance 
was in itself as unpopular as ever. Anne would hardly 
have weathered the storm but for the help she got from 
Cromwell, who had been in the King's confidence since 
1530, and from Cranmer, who succeeded Warham as 
Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533. Cranmer had been 
first a tutor in Lord Wiltshire's family, then chaplain to 
Lord Rochford and to the King ; he had also gone 
abroad on the King's service, and had married the 
niece of the German reformer Osiander, an act which 
made him liable to prosecution at any moment. His 
great claim to Henry's favour had been his scheme of 
1530 for coercing the Pope in the divorce question by 
the opinions of English and foreign Universities. This 
obtained something like what it desired from the Heads 
of Houses, Doctors, and Proctors of Oxford, all other 



1532 - More and Fisher. 173 

resident members having been prudently shut out from 
the dehberation ; the other University yielded somewhat 
more easily to Cranmer as a Cambridge man. Among 
the German Protestants Cranmer had little success, in 
spite of his connection with them ; at Paris faintly 
approving opinion was obtained by Francis's manage- 
ment, and that this might not be cancelled afterwards, 
the registers of the University were spirited away. 
The academic bodies under the Emperor's control would 
of course "have no liberty of action ; so that the net result 
of the appeal was meagre in the extreme, and what there 
was had been obtained either by threats or bribery. 

The questions which arose on Cranmer's promotion 
were, first, whether the Pope would sanction it, and then 
whether he would issue the bulls for it with- 
out the usual payment of annates to the caur™at'^ 
amount of 10,000 ducats. Henry met this Dunstable. 

^ Popular 

difficulty in a characteristic way. Parliament feeling to- 
had enacted in 1 532 that annates should not 
be paid in future to Rome ; but they had appended to their 
Bill a provision that it should not come into force before 
Easter 1533 unless the King ordered that it should do 
so by letters patent. Henry therefore allowed it to be 
understood that if Cranmer's business was expedited 
this unwelcome law might never be enforced ; and the 
Pope, in his ignorance of the new Archbishop's real 
character, fell helplessly into the snare. Even the 
Emperor did not see what was coming, in spite of the 
warning of the acute Chapuys, his ambassador in England, 
but thought it impossible that Henry should persist so 
long in a whim ; he must surely have made Anne a 
marchioness in order to get rid of her. The result was 
that the bulls were passed, and only half the usual fee 
exacted. Before they amved, however, the state of the 



174 The Early Tudors. 1533 

Marchioness of Pembroke made a prompt resolution 
necessary if appearances were to be saved. A public 
wedding was out of the question ; it would at once have 
stopped Cranmer's bulls and led to an excommunication. 
The only remedy was that it should be solemnised pri- 
vately ; and with such success was this done, that even 
now it is not known certainly by what priest it was per- 
formed or when — the date, however, was about January 
25, 1533. The secret remained an open one for- a few 
weeks, during which with some difficulty an Act of Par- 
liament was passed forbidding appeals to Rome in matri- 
monial causes, and the Convocation of the clergy was in- 
duced by various manoeuvres to declare the King's first 
marriage invalid. On the loth of May the new Arch- 
bishop opened a Court at Dunstable, summoned Kath- 
erine to appear, declared her contumacious for not doing 
so, and then gave sentence that her marriage had been 
invalid all along. A few days afterwards another session 
was held, and the King's last marriage declared to be 
regular. But when Anne went in state to the Tower the 
people would by no means take off their caps or shout 
' God save the Queen ; ' and when she was first prayed 
for in a church the congregation went out in a body. 
Meanwhile Katherine on her enforced journey from 
Ampthill to Buckden was cheered by crowds of people, 
who cried ' God bless her ' and declared that she was the 
one true queen. The Princess Mary was equally popular, 
and owed her quiet succession long after to the still 
living memories of this time. Anne tried in vain to make 
Henry punish such disloyalty ; her influence was already 
abating, and within three months he was telling her that 
she must shut her eyes to his amourettes, ' as her betters 
had done before her.' On the i ith of September the 
long-expected child was born ; but it was a daughter 



1533 - More and Fisher. 175 

after all, in spite of the predictions of a host of astrologers 
and wizards who had been consulted. In the midst of the 
King's disappointment he was mean enough to order that 
his daughter Mary should come to Hatfield and enter the 
service of the infant Elizabeth ; while Anne with charac- 
teristic coarseness declared that she would make Mary act 
as her lady's maid, and even after a while give petu- 
lant orders that she should be beaten if she claimed the 
title of Princess. 

The course taken by the Pope and Emperor was now 
dangerously serious and dignified. When asked whether 
he would undertake the deposition of Henry 
if the Pope pronounced it, Charles replied excommuni- 
that he could not give such a pledge upon a ?f fon of 
mere contingency, but that his Holiness 
would always find him an obedient son of the Church. 
The Pope therefore annulled Cramner's acts at Dunstable 
(July II, 1533) and declared that Henry would be excom- 
municated at the end of September if he had not sepa- 
rated, from Anne before that time. This was likely to be 
no brutianftdmen, for English discontent was quite pre- 
pared to welcome the Emperor, who, as the supreme 
authority of Europe, might place on the throne either 
James of Scotland or one of the Pole family, the descend- 
ants of George Duke of Clarence, Edward IV.'s brother. 
Henry had tried to meet the excommunication beforehand 
by an appeal to a General Council ; not only, however, 
was this clearly against the Papal constitutions, but it 
annoyed Francis I., who was unwilling to offend the Pope 
by repeating the very demand for a Council which the Em- 
peror was constantly making. To reinforce his position, 
he asked the Privy Council in the following December to 
advise him, first, whether the Pope is superior or inferior 
to a General Council, and, secondly, whether he has by 



176 The Early Tudors. 1533- 

God's law more authority than other bishops. Cranmer 
was the only prelate who gave the negative answer fully 
and at once; but the replies were on the whole considered 
sufficient, and orders were issued that all preachers at 
St. Paul's Cross, as well as the heads of the four Orders 
of Friars, should declare their assent to this doctrine. 
The King was farther encouraged by an opportunity which 
seemed to offer itself of heading a North European League 
independent of French and Imperial politics. A Liibeck 
captain named Marcus Meyer, who was charged with 
piracy for attacking Dutch vessels in English harbours, 
had the address to persuade him that, as the King of 
Denmark was just dead, he might get himself chosen 
as his successor, and then form with Liibeck (as the 
head of the still powerful Hanseatic League) a combina- 
tion strong enough to face all enemies. Though this 
fanciful project came to nothing, it still inspirited Henry 
at one of the most difficult and cheerless periods of all his 
life. Thus encouraged, he declared that unless the Pope 
consented in nine weeks to cancel the sentence of July 
by declaring his first marriage null and void and his 
second valid, he would separate England from the Roman 
obedience altogether. Yet it was most doubtful whether 
he would be able to carry the people with him ; indeed 
within a few weeks a bold preacher said to his face that 
the Pope's authority is the highest on earth ; and what 
Hugh Latimer thus dared to tell him openly tens of 
thousands must have been feeling in their hearts. 

Henry was now threatened at home by 
Kent. "" ° the terrors of superstition. A peasant-girl 
Peter's named Elizabeth Barton had for some years 

Fence. _ ^ 

The co«^^- been known as a kind of ' estatica.' She 

constantly fell into convulsions, during which 

she uttered words surprising from their persuasive or 



-1534 ' More atid Fisher. ijy 

terrifying power, and also appeared to know events of 
which she could not have been informed in any natural 
way. She must evidently be inspired, people thought, 
either by the spririt of God or by Satan ; and as all her 
utterances were in favour of holiness, the latter could 
hardly be her case. The rector of Aldington, in which parish 
she lived, thought it well to make her known to Warham 
a,s his diocesan. The Archbishop felt much as St. 
Bernard did when the sayings of Hildegard were re- 
ported to him. He declared that the words which she had 
spoken came from God, and commended her to the care 
of Father Bocking of Christchurch, Canterbury, and 
some other monks. Under their auspices she was ' mirac- 
ulously ' cured of her random and irregular trances ; 
thenceforward they returned upon her at intervals of a 
fortnight, and on these occasions she was consulted as an 
inspired person about Church matters of all kinds. Her 
answers strongly denounced the system of interference 
with Church privileges, and, when the divorce question 
arose, she issued ' in the name and by the authority of 
God ' a solemn prohibition to the King, declaring that if 
he parted from his wife ' he should not reign a month, 
but should die a villain's death ; ' and the Pope was 
similarly threatened if he complied. No punishment, 
however, was for the time inflicted on her ; and she 
presently entered the priory of St. Sepulchre, Canterbury, 
and was known as Sister Elizabeth, the Nun of Kent. 
When Henry was returning from Calais with Anne, she met 
him on the way with her raven prophecies of evil to 
come. But the days were at hand when statesmen would 
hold her inspiration as cheaply as Voltaire himself might 
have done. A spy of Cromwell's was the first to put 
him on the track of an important conspiracy in which 
she was to be an instrument. Cranmer was ordered to 

M 



178 The Early Tudor s. 1534 

examine her, and by feigning to believe, as Warham had 
believed, in her visions, he obtained a good deal of in- 
formation. The papers of her accomplices were seized, 
and it actually appeared that among those who were in 
correspondence with her was Sir Thomas More, who 
had resigned the Great Seal (May 16, 1532) from disgust 
at the anti-Papal measures then passing through Parlia- 
ment, with Bishop Fisher, the Marchioness of Exeter (who 
was a strong friend of Mary's), the Countess of Salisbury 
(Reginald Pole's mother), and many other eminent per- 
sons ; nothing was, however, found implicating either 
Katherine or Mary. The juncture was indeed a serious 
one. A war with Charles was impending, which, if it 
took place, would ruin English trade. Some fresh meas- 
ures lately taken for the punishment of Lutheranism and 
the prohibition of foreign books were beyond measure 
unpopular ; and the feeling for the injured Mary was 
more passionate than ever. It was not hard to foretell 
the consequences if at some critical moment a band of 
fanatical friars, backed by the Nun's inspiration, went 
abroad among the people to preach that Henry was 
God-forsaken ; especially as every one knew that the 
fearful Peasant War in Germany had been stirred up by 
an enthusiast of the Nun's type. Accordingly the Nun 
was made to read at St. Paul's Cross an acknowledgment 
of her imposture, and then committed with her accom- 
plices to the Tower to wait for the meeting of Parliament 
in January 1534. A Bill of Attainder was then brought 
in against her and the monks who had helped her, and 
they were executed (April 21). The Bill at first included 
the names of Sir Thomas More as well as of Bishop 
Fisher; the House of Lords, however, were of opinion 
that there was not sufficient evidence against More. 
Fisher was held to be guilty of misprision of treason 



i 



1534' More and Fisher. ijg 

(that is, of having countenanced and favoured it), and 
was committed to the Tower, his only defence being that, 
though he had really thought the Nun inspired, he had 
never had the least notion of fulfilling her warnings by 
conspiracy. With regard to the other persons suspected 
in various degrees, the risk which they had run and the 
knowledge that they were liable to be questioned again 
at any time might perhaps keep them from farther plans 
against Henry ; therefore no steps were taken against 
them. At the same time Parliament abolished Peter's 
Pence and all the varieties of payment to the Pope from 
England ; yet intimated that the Act was not irrevocable 
if his Holiness should consent to the divorce. The mode 
of appointment to bishoprics was also nakedly and statu- 
tably reduced to what had been essentially the established 
practice. In the case of a vacancy, that is, the Cathedral 
Chapter was to be admonished by a conge cTelire from 
the Crown to choose, as they regarded the welfare of 
their souls, a fit and proper person for the see ; but at 
the same time a second document was to be placed in 
their hands naming the person whom they were to elect, 
with prcsmunire in case of refusal. On this footing such 
elections have remained ever since, except in part of 
Edward VI. 's reign, during which bishops exercised 
their office on a simple patent from the Crown, as indeed 
those of the Irish Church did up to its disestablishment 
in 1869. In the same session Parhament settled the 
succession of the throne on Elizabeth, as born from the 
King's only lawful marriage, and enabled him to appoint 
a Commission consisting of Cranmer, Audley, who had 
succeeded Sir Thomas More as Chancellor, and the 
Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, which should impose on 
all English subjects an oath to defend the Act of Succes- 
sion ' and all the whole contents and effects thereof.' 



l8o The Early Tudors. 1534 

They then drew up a Bill of forbidden degrees in marriage, 
in conformity with the book of Leviticus, and, as Black- 
stone says, on the general principle that marriage is not 
barred by a relationship more remote than that between 
uncle and niece. Finally the Parliament declared that 
on separating from the Pope they ' had not intended to 
decline or vary from the articles of the Catholic faith of 
Christendom, or from anything declared in the word of 
God to be necessary for salvation.' 

By the middle of 1 534 the discontent against Henry was 

getting still more dangerous. We can trace almost day by 

day the steps of conspiracy. On the 9th of July 

Sns'piracies. Lord Dacre of the North was indicted before 

Rising in ^q Pcers for treasonable correspondence with 

Ireland. . ^ 

the Scots ; but they voted his acquittal with a 
boldness which astonished every one and gave great 
confidence to the malcontents, as in case of failure they 
might be able to safeguard one another in the same way. 
All through September several noblemen were trying 
to arrange an invasion from Flanders with Chapuys, 
Charles's ambassador. Lord Darcy promised to raise 
8,000 men in aid of- it; Lords Dacre and Derby, and 
even the Duke of Northumberland, the last loyal peer 
north of the Trent, were prepared to join. Men Hke the 
acute Lord Sandys and Dr. Butts, the King's physician, 
thought that Charles would have no difficulty whatever 
in conquering the country, which had now scarcely any 
navy left. Even the courtiers hardly made a secret of their 
contempt for Anne, paying visits to the Princess Mary 
under her very eyes. If Mary was sent to the Tower, 
Sir W. Kingston was ready to take up her cause ; 
while if Henry was once dethroned, he was pretty sure 
to find that for him there was no prison but the grave. 
At almost the same time Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, 



1534 ■ More and Fisher. i8i 

who had been made Irish Deputy when his father Lord 
Kildare was summoned to England, threw up his office 
on hearing of Kildare's imprisonment (June ii) and 
immediately plunged into rebellion, calling on Charles 
for help. ' He was,' he declared, ' of the Pope's sect and 
band ; him he would serve against the King and all his 
partakers ; Henry and all who took his part were accursed.' 
Sir John White, the governor of Dublin, was unable to 
defend the city, as the Fitzgeralds, while in power, had 
stripped it of military stores. Allen, the Archbishop of 
Dublin, tried to make his way to England for help, but 
was intercepted and murdered near Clontarf. Dublin 
Castle was besieged till October, but saved at last by the 
Earl of Ormond, who made a diversion by attacking the 
besiegers' homes in Kildare. After much delay, some 
forces were sent over from England ; Lord Kildare's 
castle of Maynooth, which was supposed to be impreg- 
nable, was battered down by Henry's artillery, and by 
what is called in Irish tradition the ' Pardon of May- 
nooth ' the greater part of its defenders were hanged on 
the ruins. Lord Thomas was thenceforward a fugitive ; 
yet he was bold enough to stay in Ireland in the hope 
that Imperial troops might be on the way to help him. 
As none arrived, he tried in August 1535 to make his 
peace with Lord Leonard Grey, the new Deputy, who was 
his relation by marriage. Grey, on his own showing, 
' allured him with comfortable words ' to surrender, and, 
it seems too clear, promised that his life should be 
spared. But the pledge was broken ; he remained in 
prison for about a year, and was then executed with his 
five uncles, leaving the male part of the family to be 
represented by one youth whom his friends had con- 
cealed. 

Instead of really sounding the depths of the conspiracy 



l82 The Early Tiidors. 1 535 

ajainst him, Henry seems to have thought in the latter 
^ , , part of 1534 that it would be enoug-h to terrify 

Death of ^ . •''^^ ° •' 

Fisher consciences by the new Act of Succession ; 

if they were firm, honest, and resistant con- 
sciences, so much the better for his purpose. His new 
Commission of Oaths might be made a crucial test of 
loyalty, if applied not to nobles like Darcy or Northum- 
berland, who would have made any professions without 
giving up their plans, but to such men as More, Fisher, 
and the monks of the Charterhouse, who were likely to 
swear what they meant and mean what they swore. The 
Carthusian community had a high reputation for holi- 
ness. Haughton, its Prior, was known to have warned 
his penitents against admitting the Royal Supremacy in 
Church affairs with whatever mental reservation, and it 
was certain that he would himself refuse the oath. On his 
doing so, he was prosecuted with two other Priors of his 
Order; and on the 15th of May, 1535, they suffered the 
penalty for treason in its fullest horror, giving God thanks, 
as they passed to the rope and quartering-knife, that they 
were held worthy to suffer for the truth. Many others of 
the brotherhood were either executed later on or chained 
to posts in Newgate and there (by express orders) so 
starved and otherwise ill-treated that nine out of ten thus 
imprisoned died within a fortnight. 

Somewhat earher than this the first steps had been taken 
for the trial of Sir Thomas More. On the 13th of April 
he had been ordered to appear before the Commission of 
Oaths. As he went to his boat at Chelsea, he closed the 
garden-gate behind him, that his children might not 
follow him as usual to the waterside, and whispered after 
a few minutes to Roper, his son-in-law, ' I thank our 
Lord, the field is won.' He had overcome all fears, and 
was ready to meet any consequences. Being called upon 



1535 " More and Fisher. 183 

to swear to the Act of Succession, he rephed by a 
distinction. Parliament, he said, had complete power to 
settle the succession to the throne, and he would willingly 
swear true allegiance to the heir named by it ; but to no 
nullifying of the first marriage, such as the preamble of 
the Act contained, would he consent to commit himself. 
He was therefore sent to the Tower, where Bishop Fisher 
had been ever since his conviction in the Nun's affair. 
Just then it occurred to the ministers that More's crime, 
after all, was not capital, as the Act had made it only 
misprision of treason to refuse the oath. It was therefore 
thought better to challenge him on the subject of the Royal 
Supremacy over the Church, as admitted in 1531 and 
estabhshed by Act of Parhament in 1534. Accordingly, 
Cromwell went to the Tower and called upon him to 
swear on this point, which he at once refused to do, and 
thus brought his life within the reach of the law. Car- 
dinal Fisher — for the new Pope, Paul III., had given him 
this title since his imprisonment, thus incensing Henry 
far more against him — made the same noble answer, and 
was within a few days tried, sentenced, and executed 
(June 22, 1535). More's trial began on the 6th of May; 
he was prosecuted as having originally dissuaded the 
King from marrying Anne, as refusing' to acknowledge 
him for Head of the Church, and as having written trea- 
sonable letters to Fisher from his prison. To the first 
charge he replied that a Privy Councillor's honest advice 
to the King cannot be treasonable ; to the second that 
he kept silence without malice, and only because anything 
he said would have been misconstrued ; to the third that 
the letters to Fisher were burnt, and that no evidence was 
offered of their contents, which he declared had no relation 
to the matter of the charge. Sir R. Rich, the Attorney- 
General, then swore that the accused, while in prison. 



1 



1 84 The Early Tudors. 1535 

had expressly stated to him that Parliament had no 
power to make any one Head of the Church. ' I never 
said so,' retorted More, ' nor is it likely that what I 
concealed from his Majesty I should reveal to one of 
light tongue and not commendable fame.' After his 
sentence some attempts were made to bring him to 
submission by a side wind ; but they were all in vain, and 
he was executed on the 6th of July. His quiet humour both 
at the foot of the scaffold and just before the axe fell has 
often excited admiration ; yet perhaps less than if it were 
considered that Sir W. Kingston was his dear friend 
whom he was anxious to cheer in that supreme moment. 
Never perhaps was this great man better described than 
in a passage of the ' Spectator,' which, though not ascribed 
to Addison, still is serene and pure like him. 'The 
innocent mirth which had been so conspicuous in his 
life did not forsake him to the last. His death was of 
a piece with his life ; there was nothing in it new, forced, 
or affected. He did not look upon the severing of his 
head from his body as a circumstance which ought to 
produce any change in the disposition of his mind ; and, 
as he died in a fixed and settled hope of immortality, 
he thought any unusual degree of concern improper.' 
His head was savagely set up on London Bridge, stolen 
from thence by his beloved daughter Margaret Roper, 
and seen many years afterwards in her coffin close to 
what had been her heart. 

We sometimes meet with men whose turn is so far 
sceptical, that they sympathise for awhile with the freest 
enquiry, and lead on others by their apparent 
Sii^T^'More^ acquiescence, while at the same time a deeply- 
seated and almost physical conservatism rules 
their heart and conscience, and they are likely at any 
moment to fall back with unshaken conviction upon argu- 



1535 More and Fisher. 185 

ments which they seemed long ago to have outgrown. 
Such a man was Sir Thomas More ; hence towards the 
end of his hfe he was intellectually much more like his 
early patron Cardinal Morton than the Erasmus who had 
been his delight in early manhood. Now he saw nothing 
unlikely in the idea that God might work miracles by 
means of particular images or relics ; if more than one 
place claimed to possess the body of a saint, he thought 
it enough to reply that part of the body might be in one 
place, part in another, or that there might be two saints 
of the same name, or that relics genuine in themselves 
might have been wrongly styled. It was, he thought, 
easy to believe that specially beautiful or specially old 
images might be the channels of great blessing. For- 
getting Laurentius Valla's refutation, he boldly appealed 
to our Lord's portrait sent by Him to Abgarus of Edessa 
as justifying the use of images in general. Above all 
arguments he constantly refers to the indefectibility of 
the Church ; any taint of real idolatry would, he thought 
have falsified our Lord's promise, and therefore nothing 
that the Church ever did can have this character. And 
as a corollary to this he always thought it enough to 
justify any superstition if he could show that it was 
practised by the Fathers of the first four centuries. 

He has been accused as Chancellor of great and even 
extra-judicial cruelty to Lutherans ; and it must be 
admitted that the peculiar dogmatism of Luther had 
always been odious to him as putting aside the sounder 
views of reformation in union with culture which he had 
learned from Erasmus and Colet. But, on the charge of 
torturing Protestants out of Court, there is no need to 
doubt his assertion that only twice did he ever do any- 
thing even distantly resembling this : once when he 
ordered a moderate whipping to a boy who used profane 



1 86 The Early Tudor s. 1535 

language, and once when he ' cured ' a man whose madness 
took the form of heresy by stripes appUed with much 
vigour. As to the latter case, we must not of course 
forget that beating and starvation were almost up to our 
own memory the accepted treatment for insane persons, 
and that here and there the same notion still survives. 
It cannot unfortunately be denied that he allowed his 
jurisdiction to be invoked by the Bishops, and misused it 
by keeping men in prison when they ought legally to 
have been released ; nor that he was too deeply con- 
cerned in the death of Bilney, whose chief heresy was 
charging the priesthood with immorality, and of Bainham, 
who held that ' if a Jew or Saracen trusts in God and 
keeps his law, he is a good Christian man,' and was 
therefore racked in the Tower by the Chancellor's 
order. It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow in con- 
trasting More's spirit, as regards persecution, with that 
of Wolsey, who is said to have found some means to 
save every heretic brought personally before him, 
indeed, we find with pleasure that the Tenterden 
men already mentioned, whom Warham judged in 
1 51 1 for denying the chief Roman doctrines, were 
not executed after all. Even the threatening perse- 
cution of 1527 at Oxford (which Dalaber's personal 
narrative, given by Froude and Maitland, describes with 
so much life) was ended without bloodshed by the 
accused persons making a kind of recantation and 
' bearing a faggot ' at St. Paul's. Yet if More is less 
humane than Wolsey, he is far above both Audley (his 
successor in the Chancellorship) and Cranmer. He would 
not have racked people with his own hands like the 
former ; and would have been incapable of the levity with 
which Cranmer speaks in 1 533 of ' one Frith who looketh 
to go to the fire for holding concerning the sacrament 



1535 ' The Dissolu/loft of the Monasteries. 187 

after the manner of CEcolampadius.' And if we condemn 
some of his actions, we must remember that the very 
standard by which we test them was first created by him. 
He it is who first assigned to human hfe its true value, 
maintaining that it ought never to be taken for anything 
short of murder ; because, as he puts it, law has the 
same right to give a man a dispensation for robbery or 
adultery as for killing another because he steals. His 
was the first protest against the perpetual ' paring away ' 
of poor men's wages, and against the constant and in- 
creasing sycophancy of judges. Above all he declares 
that in Utopia any one may be of what religion he will ; 
and that even atheists, although excluded from govern- 
ment because they cannot rule nobly, are still not to be 
visited with any farther punishment. The least, then, 
that can be required of a real student of history is, first, 
that such a man's life, character, opinions, and practice 
shall all be taken into account in judging of him ; and 
then that it should be considered whether a man of high 
honour who resolves to die for a noble cause does not 
thus irresistibly claim that the balance of judgment should 
be in his favour, even if all his actions cannot be approved. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES. THE 
PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE. 

1 535-1 538. 

The death of More and Fisher soon appeared to have 
been acts not less stupid than wrongful; they were as 
much against Henry's interest as they should have been 
against his conscience. From the time of his excommu- 



1 88 The Early Tudors. 1535 

nication he had been wishing to concihate foreign Pro- 
r,., V, „ - testants, and in the course of is^? he sent 

The Bull of . -'■^-' . 

Deposiiion Fox, Bishop of Hereford, to the various re- 
rawn up. formed States of Germany, in order to coun- 

teract the schemes of Francis I. for the re-estabhshment of 
Cathohc unity there. But the Germans, while firm in 
resisting French persuasion, yet valued the learning of 
the Renaissance, of which More had been such a noble 
representative, and distrusted the King who was Protest- 
ant in nothing but in murdering him and in hating the 
Pope. Moreover both he and Fisher were considered 
to have been witnesses, on the whole, to evangelical 
truth in opposing Anne's marriage.- As to foreign sove- 
reigns, Charles V. announced More's death with grave 
and sincere concern to the English ambassador, who had 
not yet heard of it ; Francis ventured to suggest that 
banishment might in future cases of the kind be a better 
punishment than death, and was vehemently rated by 
Henry for such unfriendly interference in our internal 
affairs. At Rome, of course, the death of Cardinal 
Fisher destroyed the last hope of accommodation ; so that 
the Bull of Deposition was at once drawn up, although 
the influence of both Charles and Francis was used to 
hinder its publication. By this instrument, had it been 
published, all officers of the Crown would have been re- 
leased from their oath of allegiance, the entire nation 
forbidden under pain of excommunication to acknowledge 
Henry, and orders given to the clergy to forsake the 
land, and to the nobles to rise in rebellion, helped by the 
faithful princes of Europe. Charles V., who had just been 
achieving some real and undoubted glory by the capture 
of Tunis from the pirate Barbarossa, and the recovery 
of 20,000 Christian prisoners there, seemed marked out to 
execute the Papal sentence ; and as in crushing the ruler 



1536 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 189 

of Tunis he had deprived Francis of a powerful ally 
and therefore disposed him to peace in Italy, it was not 
impossible that both Powers might unite against England. 
The death of Katherine, which happened at Kimbolton 
in January 1536, was a gleam of light among Henry's mani- 
fold embarrassments : so much had he wished ^ 

Execution 

for it that in the preceding November he had of Anne 
sworn to his Council that his next Parliament ° ^^"' 
should rid him of both her and Mary. This Chapuys 
reports to the Emperor as having been told him by the 
Marchioness of Exeter. Anne at first showed signs of 
great joy at her rival's death ; but it was observed a few 
days later that she seemed to recognise its true effect 
upon her position. Hitherto Henry had been able to 
choose only between her and Katherine, but now there 
were many ladies by whom she might be supplanted. 
Soon after this her hope of a son was again disap- 
pointed, and she saw too clearly that her last hold on 
her husband was gone ; indeed he was already plan- 
ning to marry Jane Seymour. By Katherine's death the 
main ground of quarrel with the Emperor had of course 
been removed ; therefore it was not impossible, from his 
own point of view, for Henry to be reconciled either to 
him or to the Pope. To show his disposition that way, 
he censured an untimely sermon of Cranmer's against 
Imperial usurpations, and was quite willing to help 
Charles V. against the Turks (with whom Francis, on 
the contrary, had just been making a commercial treaty) ; 
although, adhering, after the fashion of weak men, to a 
fixed idea, he even then demanded that Charles should 
allow himself to have been wrong from the first in 
opposing the marriage with Anne. Seeing that things 
were taking this direction, Cromwell became convinced 
that he had been rash in pressing things so far against 



I go The Early Tudors. 1536 

Rome; and about the middle of April it seems to have 
struck him that nothing would tend so much to conciliate 
the Catholic party as the sacrifice of Anne Boleyn, who 
was detested by them not only because England had 
broken with the Pope for her sake, but because she had 
herself showed some Protestant leanings. He is reported, 
with apparent truth, by Chapuys, as declaring that 'he 
began to contrive and conspire the said affair ' (// se meist 
a fantasie et conspira le diet affaire) against the Queen ; 
and the way in which he managed the prosecution seems 
strongly to confirm this view of his conduct. For he 
induced Henry to sign, on the 24th of April, 1536, a 
commission by which the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of 
Suffolk, with some other noblemen and any four of the 
judges, were to enquire, not into anything about Anne, 
but generally 'into all kinds of treason, by whomsoever 
committed,' and to try the offenders. Among the Com- 
missioners were the Queen's father the Earl of Wiltshire, 
and the Duke of Norfolk, her uncle. The Court being 
thus constituted, a charge against Anne and its evidence 
were next to be provided. Accordingly, on the 30th 
of the same month a conversation was reported to 
Cromwell, as having taken place on the previous day 
between Anne and Mark Smeton, a musician of the 
household, which indicated improper relations between 
them. Smeton was immediately arrested, and (with 
what encouragements or under what threats we know 
not) confessed adultery with the Queen. At any rate 
what he said implicated several other young courtiers, 
particularly Sir Francis Weston, Henry Noreys, and 
William Brereton; and to these Anne's brother. Lord 
Rochford, was afterwards added. She was accused of 
the grossest misconduct with all five, and with having 
conspired with them to kill the King. It is not desired 



1536 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 191 

here to go into the details of these most revolting trials ; 
yet it must be remarked that Anne was said to have 
done acts of unchastity at times when from the state of 
her health they were all but impossible, and that the 
charge of compassing Henry's death is absurd, seeing 
that the moment it happened she would have been 
exposed defenceless to the whole vengeance of Katherine's 
party. Her guilt has been supposed to be proved by the 
fact that her father and uncle were among the judges 
who recognised it. But to this it is replied that Wilt- 
shire was excused from sitting on her trial, and that 
Norfolk had long been hostile to her. Great stress has 
also been laid on the dying confessions or non-denials of 
Smeton and the other accused persons ; but here, again, 
there is uncertainty. They all said on the scaffold that 
they had deserved death, but not that they had done thj 
crime for which they suffered ; and as for Smeton's 
earlier confession, may he not have made it to escape 
torture, just as in this very year Sebastiano Montecuculi 
confessed for the same reason that he had poisoned the 
Dauphin of France, who was not poisoned at all ? Be- 
sides this, the prisoners were simply hanged or beheaded, 
none of them suffering the more horrid penalties of 
treason ; and it is at least conceivable that they paid for 
this remission by not protesting their innocence at last — 
caring, as a traveller of the period remarks of English- 
men in general, much more for bodily pain than for death. 
Anne was found guilty (May 15) by a jury composed 
almost entirely of gentlemen in the King's service. On 
the 17th Cranmer held a Court at Lambeth in which he 
decided, apparently because of a shameful confession by 
Henry, that Anne's marriage was null and void ab initio. 
It seemed to occur to no one that if she had never been 
married, the charge of treasonable adultery fell to the 



192 The Early Tudors. 1536 

ground of itself. On the 19th the sword of the Calais 
headsman freed Henry from his hated wife. People were 
surprised at his revelries during the trial ; he was, per- 
haps, somewhat elated by seeing how many sovereigns 
were thinking how to find him a new queen. He chose, 
however, to 'carve for himself,' and married Jane Seymour 
on the day after the execution. Against the general ex- 
pectation, he did not recognise Mary as legitimate. The 
Duke of Richmond, his favourite child, the son of his 
early mistress Elizabeth Blount, was now seventeen years 
old ; and as Parliament had allowed him to appoint his 
successor by will, there was some thought of first legiti- 
mating the Duke (as in the case of the Beauforts), and 
then making him heir to the crown. Authority, both 
Romish and Protestant, had even suggested the strange 
notion that he should marry his half-sister Mary, and 
thus close all controversy. The Protestant Tyndal ad- 
vised this ; and it had been considered as a possibility 
by Pope Clement VII., until informed by his Council 
that such a permission was ultra vires. Richmond's death, 
however, in the course of 1536 frustrated all such schemes. 
Instead of being diminished by Anne's death, Henry's 
unpopularity with the Roman party was now increasing 
daily, for many reasons. One of these was 

Henry s . 

Protestant his already mentioned wish to form an anti- 
eanings. Papal league in Northern Europe. The 

Confession of Augsburg (1530) had now embodied the 
views of the Lutheran body, and he had held out hopes 
in 1535 that he might sign it. He had also urged the 
Bishops to produce a correct translation of the Bible ; 
and, as they hesitated, had employed Miles Coverdale 
to collect and edit the various portions, perhaps with 
Tyndal'shelp. Six copies of the work, when printed, were 
ordered to be attached to stands in St. Paul's, and one 



1536 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 193 

to be bought for every church in England and placed in 
the choir. But what seemed most clearly to define his 
position was his issuing in 1536 the so-called 'Articles to 
stablish Christian Quietness' (apparently composed by 
himsell), in which, while on the whole adhering to the 
Roman doctrine, he yet partially adopted the Protestant 
expressions about justification, and spoke severely about 
the Papal corruptions connected with Purgatory and In- 
dulgences. But, above all, he had with a strong hand 
carried out his plans with regard to the monasteries as a 
reply to Paul III.'s Bull of Deposition, which he well knew 
to exist, although it appears, in spite of the assertions of 
many historians, never to have been published at all. 
For it has been pointed out that there is no contemporary 
copy of it in England ; that Bishop Burnet printed it for 
the first time, not from the Records, but from a Roman 
BuUarium ; that Hall and Foxe make no mention of its 
publication ; and that for several years after this it is 
spoken of by the Romish party only as likely to be pub- 
lished. 

The monasteries of England had, almost from a fatal 
necessity, degenerated from the principles on which they 
were founded. It may be said in general 
that decay in such institutions can be hin- monas°Irks^ 
dered only by a system of vigorous inspection 
and control, combined with authority, such as the Popes 
had exercised, to break up and remodel them according 
to the needs of the time. But most of the important Eng- 
lish monasteries belonged either to the Cistercian or to one 
of the gi'eat Mendicant Orders ; in any case their superiors 
were foreigners, and, as such, could only with great diffi- 
culty exercise any superintendence in England. Thus 
the rules enforcing labour, study, or mission-work had 
become relaxed ; numbers of servants were kept in the 

N 



1 94 The Early Tudors. 1535 

large foundations to work for the monks ; and the in- 
mates had in many cases begun to fret against the law of 
celibacy to which they were subject. Their position as 
feudal superiors also from time to time embroiled them 
with their dependents, so that most violent armed rebel- 
lion against their authority was not unknown. Warham, 
as we have seen, had feebly tried to abate the monastic 
disorders of his own day ; and Wolsey had suppressed a 
few of the poorer foundations in order to obtain funds for 
endowing Christchurch. Now the establishment of the 
Royal Supremacy laid the abbeys open to attack ; so in 
the summer of 1535, just after the death of Sir Thomas 
More, Cromwell, as the King's vicegerent in ecclesiastical 
matters, ordered a Visitation of the Universities, the re- 
ligious houses, and all other spiritual corporations in the 
kingdom. That there was no thought of any such reform 
as that which had produced the self-devotion of the Thea- 
tines in Italy, or the exertions of the Franciscan body 
there during the plague of 1528, is plain enough from 
the character of the Commissioners. These were Drs. 
Legh, Layton, and Aprice, ecclesiastical lawyers of no 
great standing, but apt at ferreting out clerical scandals, 
such as Layton soon began relating to Cromwell with 
huge gusto and self-gratulation at having found such 
desirable evidence. Nor was the time allowed for the 
enquiry a less clear evidence of its intention ; this was 
only four months, after which the Commissioners' report 
was to be ready for the session of Parliament. As 
there were more than i ,000 monasteries to be reported 
on, it was clear that the work could not be got through 
in the time, especially as each foundation was, as a rule, 
visited by two of them successively, and there was a 
schedule of eighty questions to be gone into with each 
community. Plainly, therefore, the reporters must have 



1535 "^^^ Dissolution of the Monasteries. 195 

adopted very short methods of getting evidence together 
— indeed they seem to have chiefly aimed at having 
something to say about each ; and this something, if evil, 
was generally about the Abbot or Superior, who, as we 
have seen, had often been appointed by the King, or 
some other patron, for reasons quite, unconnected with 
the discipline or welfare of the house. 

It would have been well if all the Commissioners' 
work had been like what they did at Oxford, making very 
real reforms and carrying off no plunder. At Magdalen, 
New College, and All Souls they established ^^ 

° _ ^ _ The 

classical lectures and provided for their sup- Universities 

, . n • 1 visited. 

port, imposmg loss of commons on all resident 
students who did not attend one of them at least daily. 
They commanded that no monastic student, under pain 
of being ' sent down ' to his cloister, should be found in 
any tavern. They also ordered the works of Duns Scotus 
to be disused — ' a shallow way,' says the annalist of Oxford, 
' to treat an author so profound that wise men could 
hardly understand him after thirty years' study.' Ac- 
cordingly, on a second visit to New College, ' we found,' 
reports Layton, ' all the great quadrant court full of the 
leaves of Duns, the wind blowing them into every corner, 
and Mr. Grenfell, a Buckinghamshire gentleman, gather- 
ing them up to trim sewels or blanchers to keep the deer 
within the wood, thereby to have the better cry with his 
hounds.' As the agitation in the Church was driving 
clerks to try for a living through medicine, the Commis- 
sioners also ordained that no member of the University 
should practise it till he had satisfied the Professor of 
Medicine as to his knowledge. 

From Oxford Layton went down into Kent, and on 
Monday, October the 22d, had the pleasure of detecting 
the Abbot of Langdon in a breach of morality. On the 



196 The Early Tudor s. 1536 

next day, as it appears, he went on to Canterbury ' to 
„. . . , visit the Archbishop's see,' intending, as he 

Visitation of 

ttie Moiias- says, to be at Faversham by the evening. If 
so, the late October day must have been well 
occupied; as, beside the two journeys, there was an 
anti-Papal sermon by Cranmer at the Cathedral, and 
an inventory to be taken of the Christchurch valu- 
ables. At Faversham the Abbot was found ' too old 
to visit his domains actively ' — he had been in office 
since 1498 — but when called upon in the following 
March to resign, he quietly replied 'that he was not so 
far enfeebled, neither in body nor in remembrance, but 
that he might well accommodate himself to the gov- 
ernance of his poor house and monastery.' On the 5th 
of November Aprice wrote to Cromwell that the Abbot 
of Bury St. Edmunds ' delighted much in playing at dice 
and cards, and spent much money in this and in building 
for pleasure. He was also fond of staying at the various 
granges. The monastery, too, was full of false relics ; 
pieces of the true Cross enough to make a cross of, some 
of the coals with which St. Lawrence was burned,' and 
the like. Meanwhile Legh had joined Layton for the 
Visitation of the northern abbeys. At Chicksand they 
found that two nuns had been ill-conducted. At Leicester 
they exceptionally commend the authorities of St. Mary's 
Colleges and Hospital as keeping these well and honestly, 
and having 300/. ready for use in their treasury. ' The 
monks of Leicester Abbey,' they say, ' are confederate, 
and will confess nothing ' ; Layton therefore intends to 
object against them things which he had heard elsewhere, 
though not of them. In Yorkshire the Commissioners 
found instances of disgusting vice, they do not say where ; 
in St. Mary's Abbey at York they ' expect to find much 
evil disposition both in the Abbot and the convent.' At 



1536 ■ The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 197 

Fountains the Abbot, ' a mere fool and idiot,' and said to 
be grossly immoral, had stolen the sexton's keys, pos- 
sessed himself of a jewelled cross, and sold it with other 
valuables to a London jeweller. The Commissioners 
announce that he has been deposed, but secretly, for fear 
that the Earl of Cumberland should claim the appoint- 
ment ; Layton recommends for it a monk of the house, 
called Marmaduke, who will pay 400/. for the appoint- 
ment, and 1,000/. of first-fruits. 

As not many of the letters sent by the Visitors now 
survive, there is little to add from this source to the ex- 
tracts just made. When the visitation of Fountains took 
place, the meeting of Parliament was at hand, and the 
Commissioners set about preparing their report, which is 
said to have been commonly called the ' Black Book,' 
and to have excited so much anger when read in the 
House of Commons that all with one voice cried out 
' Down with them ! ' Selden, on the contrary, states that 
Henry had to threaten the members with death if they 
did not pass the Act of Suppression ; and thei^e is no 
doubt that the debate upon it was long and bitter. The 
' Black Book ' itself, if there ever was such a document, 
has perished ; three MSS. however remain, generally 
called the ' Comperta,' which purport to be extracts from 
it, and to analyse the confessions made at different 
monasteries. In some instances the ' Comperta ' can be 
compared with the Visitors' letters, as for instance with 
regard to Fountains. We have seen what was said of 
this by Layton, which is far from describing the place as 
the universal sink of iniquity of which the ' Comperta ' 
speaks. Nor can it well be replied that the original and 
detailed confessions may have been in writing and there- 
fore different from what the Commissioners received 
orally ; for, if so, some of them would have been still 



198 The Early Titdors. 1536 

among the Records, which is not the case. According to 
Burnet's account, the ' Black Book ' itself was destroyed 
by Reginald Pole under Queen Mary ; but if it was in 
Henry's reach at the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace, why 
did he say nothing of what would have been the best of 
all proofs that he had done well and not ill in destroying 
the monasteries ? To this it must be added, on the 
highest authority, that, as a rule, documents discreditable 
to Romanism were not destroyed under Queen Mary, 

After all, the Act distinguished the houses that were 
to be suppressed, not by their greater immorality, but, 
as Wolsey had done, by their less wealth. ' Parliament 
had heard from the King,' so said the Act, ' of enormities 
done in the abbeys ; he in turn had learned these from his 
Commissioners and from other credible witnesses.' It 
was therefore ordained that those which had an income 
less than 200/. a year should revert to the Crown instead 
of to the founders' heirs as we might have expected. But 
Henry was authorised to preserve as many of them as he 
pleased by letters patent ; and out of the 376 then confis- 
cated thirty-seven were refounded in the following August, 
and remained till the general dissolution. At first a fresh 
Commission had been formed, in which neighbouring 
gentlemen were in each case included, to settle which 
should be preserved ; but the reports from this were so 
uniformly favourable to the abbeys that Henry rudely 
accused the members of receiving bribes and soon can- 
celled it. He at the same time placed the remaining 
monasteries under a rule which aimed at shutting up 
monks rather than utilising them ; and rather than sub- 
mit to this a number surrendered to him of their own 
accord. 

Such was the celebrated Visitation of the Monasteries. 
Instead of being made centres of learning and education. 



1536 ' The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 199 

they were generally demolished and the materials sold 
by the courtiers to whom Henry granted them. How 
far the monks deserved their fate there is little evidence 
to show. As Church writers of earlier times seldom spared 
accusations of immorality against the regular clergy, and 
as these bodies had very little effective visitation, it is 
natural to suppose that their morals would in some cases 
be those of a large school or college left to itself. But it 
is not to be supposed that the Record Office contains a 
huge ' mystery of iniquity ' in documents which escape 
publication by being too bad for it. It is to be feared 
that historians will always be reduced, in the absence of 
sufficient evidence either way, to acquit or condemn these 
institutions rather by their own notions of the probable 
than on any quite convincing arguments. 

As the year 1536 rolled on, it was plain that the con- 
spiring lords had lost their opportunity. The Emperor, 
in whose help they trusted, was now most un- 
likely to send troops either to England or rebellion. 
Ireland, as a fresh war with France for Milan 
had broken out, and by August in this year the sovereigns 
were engaged in a cross invasion, with the result that 
Francis fortified himself in Turin, while the Emperor lost 
30,000 of his veterans from famine and disease in his at- 
tack on Provence. Consequently the Northern peers re- 
mained inactive, though sullen ; and the conspiracy would 
probably have died out, had not the commons of the 
same counties suddenly blazed into an insurrection from 
motives partly the same as those of the nobles and partly 
peculiar to themselves. Like their betters they objected 
to the plebeian advisers of the King, the promotion of 
Cranmer and other heretics in the Church, the suppres- 
sion of the monasteries, and a new Statute of Uses which 
made it very difficult for landowners to throw on their 



200 The Early Tudor s. 1536 

estates the charge of providing for their younger children. 
But as a revolution is seldom really vigorous unless a 
question of land is at the bottom of it, so to these griev- 
ances was added a deep-felt middle-class discontent at 
the system of enclosures and sheep-feeding which still 
continued to harass farmers of the old school in a 
manner which they only half understood but entirely 
resented. 

The town of Louth, in the marshes of East Lincoln- 
shire, is even now somewhat out of the world. The 
country round it is so intersected with 'cuts,' so liable to 
inroads of the sea, and so incapable of growing trees, 
that field-sports are out of the question in it ; therefore 
the resident gentry are few, and a system of small hold- 
ings still prevails there, creating, as usual, a most inde- 
pendent spirit in the owners. This was the district 
where revolt was first to show itself. The nunnery of 
Legbourne, close to the town, was on the point of sup- 
pression, and Heneage, one of the Visitors, was expected 
with the Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral on this unpopular 
errand. On Monday the 2d of October, 1 536, he arrived, 
and a furious riot instantly broke out, from which he took 
refuge in the church, but was brought back and forced to 
swear that he would be true to the commons. The book 
containing Cromwell's commission was torn in pieces, and 
his servants placed in the stocks. Shortly after this a 
similar rising began at Horncastle, and was joined by a 
number of gentry and by the Abbot of Barlings, who 
appeared with his canons in full armour ; there too the 
celebrated banner of the Five Wounds of Christ was 
raised for the first time. The unhappy Chancellor fell 
into the hands of the mob and was murdered ; and on 
the same day there was a rising at Lincoln, and Bishop 
Longland's palace was plundered. If the nobles had now 



1536 " The Pilgrimage of Grace. 201 

come forward to head, the movement, and strengthened 
it by the forces at their command, Henry's reign and hfe 
might soon have come to an end together. However, 
Lord Hussey, who had spoken much of rebeUion, could 
not persuade himself to take either side, but remained in- 
active at Sleaford ; and within a week from the outbreak 
the advanced guard of the royal forces arrived at Stam- 
ford. Two days later the Duke of Suffolk with the main 
body joined them, to hear that the insurrection was 
already breaking up. In this emergency Henry had 
shown a really royal firmness — not ill pleased, perhaps, to 
have nobler occupations than those which had so long 
enthralled him. To the written demands of the rioters 
for the dismissal of low counsellors and the like, he replied 
that the ' rude commons of one- shire, and that one of the 
most brute and beastly of the whole realm, should not 
be allowed to rule their prince ; his orders were that they 
should disperse at once, and surrender a hundred of 
their chief men.' Expecting on this to be delivered up, 
the leaders thought of cutting their way through and 
placing themselves in Suffolk's hands. They were, how- 
ever, allowed to pass without resistance, and the first act 
of the Pilgrimage of Grace was at an end. 

But a far harder trial was to come ; for on the 8th of 
October a much better-organised insurrection burst out 
in Yorkshire. A paper urging a rebellion for „, ,, , 

J^ i "^ * The York- 

the sake of God's truth had been circulated in shire insur- 
that county under the signature of a popular 
young lawyer named Robert Aske, who had been watch- 
ing the Lincolnshire events ; and on returning home, 
although he declared that he knew nothing of the paper, 
he found himself stormily welcomed as leader. Lord 
Darcy, the chief person in Yorkshire, followed Lord 
Hussey's example in temporising, and shut himself up 



202 The Early Tiidors. 1536 

with a few foreigners in Pontefract Castle, although he 
had been all along one of the conspiring nobles, and was 
favourable to the objects proposed by the rebels, who on 
the 14th of October mustered on Weighton Heath, about 
eighteen miles east of York ; their troops being picked 
men, well armed and equipped for war. Having sum- 
moned Hull in vain, they left half their forces to besiege it, 
while the rest marched-on York and were unhesitatingly 
welcomed there ; the monasteries were cleared and their old 
inhabitants restored. They then marched to Pontefract, 
where, after some hesitation. Lord Darcy joined them 
just when Lord Shrewsbury was at hand with forces for 
his relief. Soon Hull surrendered, and at length the 
small castle of Skipton, which still remains entire, was 
the only strong place in Yorkshire unsubdued ; while 
large rebel reinforcements were arriving from Durham 
under Lords Latimer and Lumley, and two sons of the 
Duke of Northumberland had already brought up the 
standard of St. Cuthbert for a southward march. Even 
the Archbishop of York, who had been with Lord Darcy 
at Pontefract, had for the time given in his adhesion. 
Thirty thousand excellent troops now moved under Aske's 
command against Doncaster, more than a third of them 
being mounted and clad in armour. But Henry, ming- 
ling prudence with firmness, used a variety of means to 
break it up, reminding Lord Latimer and others how dis- 
graceful to them it was to be serving under a man of such 
low rank as Aske, and explaining by means of papers 
scattered all over the North that a plan of Cromwell's for 
parish registers had no reference to taxation, and that 
none of the recent Church measures had been hostile to 
true religion. When the rebels reached the banks of the 
Don, they found that he had wisely opposed to them the 
Duke of Norfolk and Lords Shrewsbury, Rutland, Hunt- 



1536 The Pilgrimage of Grace. 203 

ingdon, and Talbot, all men popular in the North, yet 
evidently resolved to obey the King's orders whatever 
happened. It was impossible to force Doncaster Bridge 
in face of their artillery, and twice, when an attack had 
been planned, a storm made the river too deep to cross, 
the floods seeming as fatal to the Pilgrimage of Grace as 
that of the Severn had been to Buckingham's revolt in 
1483. Thus Aske was compelled to negotiate ; his terms 
being that all concerned should receive a pardon, and 
that their Articles of Accommodation should be transmitted 
to the King. These included restoration of the Pope's 
authority, and condign punishment for all concerned in 
overthrowing it, among whom Cromwell, Layton and 
Legh, and the reforming Bishops were especially named 
(the penalty suggested for the last being ' fire or such 
other '), remission of taxes, enforcement of the Acts against 
enclosure, and a few others. But Henry now began to 
feel that the game was in his own hands. Aske and 
Darcy were, he plainly saw, men who wished for revolu- 
tion only if it could be had without overt acts of rebellion. 
He therefore detained Aske's messengers for a fortnight, 
firmly refusing to hold a Parliament till the crisis was 
over, or even to grant an unreserved pardon. The leaders 
would, he felt sure, find their scheme of a Northern Parlia- 
ment impracticable, and be unable to get help in time 
from the Emperor, or to bring over to them the coun- 
try south of the Trent. He therefore ordered Nor- 
folk to reoccupy the line of the Don which he had aban- 
doned, and to maintain it at all hazards. Yet as more 
and more insurgents gradually came in from the North, 
and the severe weather made it difficult to keep the field 
against them, Henry was at last induced to relent. On 
the 2d of December news came that he had granted a full 
pardon, promised to hold a Parliament at York, and con- 



204 The Early Tudors. 1537 

sented to enquire into the question of enclosures. On 
hearing this Asl<;e instantly threw off his badge with the 
Five Wounds, and declared that henceforth he would 
wear no device but the King's. Nor was Henry unfaithful, 
for the time at least, to his part of the compact. He had be- 
fore checked and reproved as dishonourable Norfolk's de- 
sire to make terms with the intention of breaking them ; and 
he now admitted to his presence the insurgent leaders and 
explained to them how little reason there had been for the 
outbreak. One of these was Aske himself; the King 
said that he took him now for Ijis faithful subject, and 
wished to hear from him the history of the rebellion. 
Aske in return warned the King of the dangerous discon- 
tent still remaining in Yorkshire, and of the general fear 
that the pardon would be delusive. In fact early in 1537 
partial insurrections, entirely disavowed by the late 
leaders, were raised by Sir Francis Bigod in Yorkshire, 
and by Nichol Musgrave in Cumberland. As these were 
believed to have been instigated by the monks, express 
and stern orders were sent to put to death any who were 
taken ; and in obedience to these about seventy-four per- 
sons were hanged on the walls of Carlisle. Of the Lin- 
colnshire prisoners nineteen with Lord Hussey were exe- 
cuted after trial ; and, saddest of all, the new insurrec- 
tions drew on the death of Aske and his colleagues, who 
were alleged on slight evidence to have gone against the 
government in them and thus to have forfeited their pardon. 
Lady Bulmer was burned alive in Smithfield for a plot to 
carry off the Duke of Norfolk, the Abbots of Fountains 
and Jorvaulx were hanged, and, strangely enough, Lan- 
caster Herald, the King's own messenger, who had boldly 
faced Aske at Pontefract, now shared the same fate be- 
cause he had disgraced his tabard by kneeling to a rebel 
in oi-der to dissuade him from his enterprise. In spite of 



1537 The Pilgr-image of Grace. 205 

the treasons of the Northern Abbots, their monasteries 
were not at once confiscated ; but their offence was held 
to be a sufficient reason for claiming possession at any 
time. There is a curious Lancashire tradition that the 
Abbot of Whalley had been driven into insurrection by a 
stratagem of Aske's, who managed to get the great con- 
vent-beacon fired, and so made it appear that the signal 
had been given by the Abbot himself ; if this is true, it 
did not save the unfortunate man's life nor his monastery. 
Soon the great abbeys of Jorvaulx, Bridlington, and Fur- 
ness were suppressed, and not long after this Chertsey, 
Castleacre, Lewes, and Leicester surrendered under the 
old Act. To these must be added St. Augustine's, Canter- 
bury, the mother of English Christianity, which has been 
so nobly and happily restored in our own time as a hard- 
working Missionary College. 

The point to which the English Reformation had now 
advanced doctrinally is indicated by two events. One of 
these was Henry's passionate refusal to let England be 
represented at the Council of Mantua, which even Luther 
had accepted in 1535 on the proposal of the 
lately elected Pope, Paul III., and his vehe- 'Bishops' 
ment exertions to hinder the German Protest- 
ants from attending it, on the ground that it belonged 
not to the Pope but to princes to summon such assemblies. 
The other was the publication by authority in 1537 of the 
' Institution of a Christian Man,' drawn up chiefly by 
Cranmer and Bishop Fox, and generally called the 
• Bishops' Book.' Its plan was to represent the Christian 
faith, article by article, not as bare dogmas, but as power- 
ful to influence men's hearts and Hves. It is anti-Roman 
mainly as teaching that, wherever the faith is held, there 
the Church is, and that no Church has rule over any 
other ; in contrasting strongly the Church militant and its 



2o6 The Early Tudors. 1537 

admixture of evil with the invisible and unfailing Church 
unseen ; and in speaking much more of the work of the 
priesthood and their obedience to civil rule than of in- 
herent powers possessed by them. While in terms ad- 
mitting seven sacraments, it still defines them much 
as Protestants would have done. It is curious that it re- 
.peatedly prohibits as offensive to God all divination, 
palmistry, or witchcraft ; and an Act of Parliament passed 
in 1 54 1 throws light on this by showing that a system had 
grown up of searching by supernatural means for the 
treasures built up or buried in the ruined monasteries, 
whose exact position was now forgotten. 

On the 20th of October, 1537, the long-wished-for Prince 

of Wales was at length born, and many regulations were 

made for watching a life so precious. At the 

ward born' Same time the Queen's brother Sir Edward 

Case of Seymour was made Earl of Hertford, Sir Wil- 

L.ambert. ^ 

liam Fitzwilliams Earl of Southampton, and 
Sir W. Russell Lord Russell. As if it were fated that the 
hope of the dynasty was to rest on one son, the Queen, 
who seemed at first to be doing well, took cold and died 
in four days. Her virtues and graces have been exag- 
gerated by history ; yet Henry's grief was sincere, and 
proved by his ordering 1,200 masses for her soul and 
remaining a widower till 1539. The submissions which 
the Princess Mary had been long offering were now ac- 
cepted ; and, though not acknowledged as legitimate, it 
was understood that she was placed in the line of suc- 
cession. About the same time the navy, which was 
in the utmost decay, was so far restored as to be able to 
guard our coasts from the secure insolence of pirates. 
Considering Henry's early predilection for the sea, it is 
strange to hear of Spaniards and Frenchmen daring to 
attack one another in our harbours, and of English vessels 



1538 ' End of the Abbeys. 207 

being plundered by corsairs within sight of land. 
However, a small fleet was now fitted out which 
successfully fought a French plundering squadron in 
Mount's Bay; single pirates were captured here and 
there, and our harbours put in a state of defence. The 
expenses were paid out of the Abbeys ; this being the 
chief national purpose (except indeed the foundation of 
six new bishoprics) achieved by the many spoliations 
which went on through 1538 and 1539. One remarkable 
instance of this was the destruction of the shrine of St. 
Thomas of Canterbury, from which twenty-six cartloads 
of treasure were taken ; a paragraph added at this time 
to the unpublished Bill of Deposition gives some credit 
to the story that St. Thomas himself was summoned to 
appear (much as the dead Pope Formosus was by his 
successor) and plead to the charge of treason against 
Henry H. On the same view of history a friar named 
Forrest, who had asserted that Becket and Fisher were 
alike martyrs, was burned in a fire made with the wood of 
a celebrated Welsh image called 'Derfel Gadarn,' which 
had been supposed to have power to draw souls out of 
hell. An exhibition was also made at Court of the 
mechanism by which the statue of Christ at Boxley had 
been made to move its head and weep. It really seemed 
as if the Reformation had taken the ' holding-turn;' such 
certainly was Latimer's view when he preached Forrest's 
death-sermon, in the firm belief that the birth of Edward 
had secured the victory of Protestantism among us and 
made God, as he expressed it, ' really an English God.' 
But causes of an opposite tendency were also at work, 
imdivined by the simple-minded Bishop of Worcester. 
Negotiations had been going on for the King's marriage 
with the Duchess of Milan, Charles V.'s niece ; and this 
required, from the lady's point of view, a Papal dispensa- 



2o8 The Em-ly ludors. 1539 

tion. Such difficulties might possibly be got over by- 
inducing the Emperor to break with the Pope as Henry 
had done ; but there was absolutely no hope of this, 
unless England could be shown to be orthodox in spite 
of the schism. Henry was also moved in the same 
direction by a letter from the Landgrave of Hesse 
against Anabaptism, which had shocked all Germany 
in 1535 by its unbridled rule of polygamy and murder at 
Miinster. It is also clear that he felt deeply scandalised 
at the profanity and mockerj^ of holy things which was 
getting rife in his own dominions. All these motives 
made him wish to give some striking proof that his faith 
was sound ; and a suitable opportunity soon occurred. 
John Lambert, who had been a friend of Tyndal, was 
condemned in the Archbishop's Court for denying tran- 
substantiation, and appealed to the King. Henry heard 
the cause in person at Whitehall, showed his animus 
against the prisoner by taunting him with having two 
names, forced him to say ' Aye ' or ' No ' without qualifica- 
tion to the question whether Christ's body is in the 
sacrament, crushed him with the text ' This is my Body,' 
and then left him to die, saying that ' the King would be 
no patron of heretics.' This was evidently no freak or 
accident, but the sign of a settled policy ; the next chapter 
v/ill show how it was to be carried out, how resisted, and 
in what the resistance was to end. 



The Yorkist Conspiracy. 209 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE YORKIST CONSPIRACY. ANNE OF CLEVES. TftE 
SIX ARTICLES. THE FALL OF CROMWELL. 

1538-1539- 

It seemed fated that revolts against Henry should fail for 
want of combination. This, as we have seen, 

■ 1 1 • r -, Lord Exeter 

had been the case with the conspu-acy of the and the 
nobles and the two acts of the Pilgrimage of six Articles^ 
Grace; and now the fourth division of the 
same general movement was to be managed still more 
impotently, and to bring still wider ruin on its promoters. 
The House of York was in 1538 chiefly represented 
by the Marquis of Exeter, whose inother, Lady Courtenay, 
was Edward IV.'s daughter, and by Lady Salisbury, who 
was daughter to George Duke of Clarence, niece to 
King Edward, and sister to the Earl of Warwick who had 
perished with Wai-beck. The sons of this venerable lady 
were Lord Montagu, and Arthur, Reginald, and Geoffrey 
Pole. The Marquis of Exeter had unwillingly joined in 
the suppression of the Pilgrimage of Grace, yet remained 
bitterly hostile to Cromwell and the new teaching. 
Since then he had been complained of as hindering the 
course of justice in his own county ; and now informa- 
tion came from members of his household that he was 
raising men in Cornwall with the view of getting himself 
named heir to the Crown, and from a painter at the 
turbulent Cornish village of St. Kevern that orders had 
been given for a banner of the Five Wounds. On farther 
enquiry it appeared that the tenacious Cornishmen had 
not forgotten Blackheath Field, and still longed to over- 
o 



2IO The Early Tiidors. 1538 

throw the Tudor dynasty. That the Poles shared in 
the plot was presently made too clear by the cowardice 
of Sir Geoffrey, who, to shield himself, volunteered 
evidence that his brother Lord Montagu and Lord and 
Lady Exeter were all in correspondence with Cardinal 
Reginald Pole. The danger was serious ; for other 
evidence showed that Paul III. was plotting a Spanish 
conquest of Ireland and had sent Pole to Liege that 
he might be near enough to hold all the threads of 
the intrigue together. And, worst of all, the Emperor 
had for some unexplained purpose collected 200 ships 
at Antwerp. The strongest measures were therefore 
adopted ; Exeter and Montagu were put on their trial 
and condemned, not for the conspiracy, which it was 
better to keep as secret as possible, but as traitors in 
word; Lady Exeter and Lady Salisbury were attainted 
and imprisoned in the Tower. On this occasion Henry 
asked the Judges whether Parliament could attaint with- 
out giving any reason ; their reply was that the question 
was dangerous, that Parliament is bound to set an 
example not of lawlessness, but of justice; yet that if 
it did so deal with any one, his attainder would hold. 
It might have been expected that being thus attacked by 
the Pope would have made Henry more Protestant ; yet 
it had not this effect, as he seemed still anxious to prove 
himself as faithful as any rebel could be to the old rehgion, 
undeterred by a danger which after all had not been 
extreme. He also really hated, as we have seen, the 
spirit of ribaldry which had set in under pretence of 
religion. To meet this he first published an earnest and 
even touching exhortation to decent reverence in externals, 
and then, after proclaiming an amnesty for past offences 
against religion, set himself to consider how they might 
be prevented in future. Even on the principles of our 



1539 " "^^^^ "5^-^ Articles. 211 

own time some punishment was required to check 
disorder ; for Bible-reading aloud in church had been 
made an excuse for interrupting the service and abusing 
its minister, and if a zealous Protestant disliked any 
church-ceremony, he was not unlikely to rate the clergy- 
man performing it, and to tell him loudly that he ' did 
nought.' Some were reported as ' common singers 
against the sacraments and ceremonies,' others as players 
of interludes railing on the priesthood, others again as 
mimicking the elevation of the Host with the most odious 
profanity. To deal with this state of things, a Com- 
mission was formed of Cromwell, the two Archbishops, 
and six Bishops representing various parties ; but, as 
these could not agree on their report, or at any rate did 
not send it in at once, the Duke of Norfolk moved in the 
House of Lords that Parliament as a whole should 
discuss the main points of controversy and settle the law 
concerning them. The result was an Act imposing by 
lay authority alone the celebrated ' Six Articles,' the very 
sound of which was thought certain to daunt the profane. 
In the first of these transubstantiation, the very antithesis 
to Protestandsm, was again and finally affirmed ; any 
one denying it was to be burned without any chance of 
saving himself by retraction. In the next four com- 
munion in one kind was asserted to be sufficient, the 
observance of vows of chastity was enjoined, and private 
masses and auricular confession maintained ; whoever 
twice denied any of these was to suffer death as a felon. 
All marriages contracted by priests were pronounced 
void, and the wives were to be dismissed by a certain 
day. To refuse communion or confession was also 
felony. 

Of course if this Act had been fully enforced, there 
would have been a persecution worthy of Alva or Torque- 



212 The Early Tudors. 1539 

mada. And for a few days the risk of this appeared 
considerable — as in the City of London, where the Roman 
party formed a committee at Mercers' Hall, and de- 
nounced not less than 500 of their fellow-citizens as 
heretics. But the King was not inclined to persecute on 
this scale ; he allowed the accused to be securities for 
one another, and so dismissed them. Partly from his 
backwardness and partly from Cromwell's opposition, the 
Six Articles, though professedly in force for eight years, 
were really so only at intervals, and when Henry gave 
permission. As there were four of these short persecu- 
tions in the remainder of the reign, some of them specially 
cruel, and costing on the whole twenty-seven lives, the 
result of the Act is sufficiently lamentable not to need 
exaggerations ; historians therefore should not have 
spoken of Gardiner and the Bishops as ' daily sending 
men to the stake ' under it. One of its first consequences 
was that Cranmer sent his wife abroad, and Latimer and 
Shaxton were deprived of their sees. At about the same 
time an Act of Parliament vested the abbey lands in the 
King and those to whom he granted them, thus establish- 
ing, as Mr. Hallam remarks, the wealth of great families 
like the Russells, who were to be famous in after years, 
and at last to become the surest barrier against tyranny 
in England. So was completed the dissolution of the 
monasteries, which every historian must be glad at last 
to dismiss ; unhappily some of its last scenes were also 
the ugliest, as Avhen the Abbot of Glastonbury, who had 
hidden his plate in the hope of better times, was hanged 
for this crime at the top of the ' Tor ' close by, to be seen 
far and wide across the Somersetshire plain. 

In strong contrast with such horrors stands that ad- 
mission of Wales into the English polity which is the most 
honourable thing Henry ever did ; indeed its effect on 



1539 ■ Welsh Legislation. 213 

Welsh turbulence has been compared by Burke to the 
' calming of the tempest when the " Twins " 
are first seen above the horizon.' According for Wales" 
to existing laws, no Welshman could buy land 
or house in or near any city or town in the Marches, orbe 
a burgess of any corporate English town, or an apprentice 
in any English town whatever. The manufacture and im- 
port of armour were forbidden in Wales, and all Welsh 
meetings were unlawful, except by special license. The 
vernacular poet Glyn Cothi complains bitterly that his 
furniture had been confiscated on his presuming to marry 
an Englishwoman ; had he been English and his wife 
Welsh, he would have forfeited all franchises and made 
himself a Welshman in the eye of the law. Unlike his 
father, Henry VIII. thought much of the Principality in 
the latter years of his reign ; and it was settled by various 
statutes that the English law alone should be current 
there, that instead of the despotic jurisdiction of the Lords 
Marchers justices of the peace should be established and 
hold sessions in each county twice a year, that Welsh- 
born subjects should have the same privileges as English- 
men, and that each county and each county town should 
send a member to P arliament. As raids into England 
might still happen, it was ordered that no ferry-boat 
should take any Welshman acrose the Severn by night. 
And, by way of complement to this, English disorder was 
repressed bythe vigour of Roland Lee, the Warden of the 
Marches, both in Cheshire, which had long presumed on 
its privileges as a County Palatine not subject to the royal 
courts by sending bands out to plunder neighbouring 
counties, and in Shropshire and Herefordshire, which 
used their position on the border for the same purpose. 

When Henry's hand was refused by the Duchess of 
Milan, Cromwell, finding the Six Articles passed in spite 



214 



The Early Tudors. 



1539 



The alliance 
with Cleves. 
Fall of 
Cromwell. 



of him, devised a singularly bold plan for saving Prot- 
estantism in England by marrying Henry to some lady 
who would lead him in that direction. Anne, 
sister to the Duke of Cleves, seemed well 
suited for this purpose ; for the Duke was a 
Protestant, and his dominions, which in- 
cluded Juliers, Berg, and part of Hanover, placed him in 
the closest connection with the Protestant States of Hesse 
and Saxony, and with Hermann Archbishop of Cologne, 



CIEYES, MAB,K, BEEG, JDLIEKS. 




who was already showing the Protestant tendencies which 
led to his deposition in 1543. He was therefore a most 
important member of the ' Smalkaldic League ' against 
the Emperor, which had been formed in 1531, and had 
on the loth of July, 1536, been enlarged and renewed 
for ten years, the contingent of troops which each of its 
members was to supply being also arranged against 
emergencies. Moreover he had claims on Gelderland, 



154° The Alliance with Cleves. 215 

v/hich, if established, would make his territory like an 
open gate for any one wishing to attack the Emperor 
either in Holland or Germany, and having France for an 
ally. Cromwell therefore threw his whole force into the 
negotiation, hoping thus to checkmate the party which 
had carried the Six Articles and which wished to see 
Charles invade England. On the 27th of December, 
1539, the lady landed at Deal ; on the 31st Henry met her 
at Rochester and found her lamentably unlike Holbein's 
portrait, quite devoid of accomplishments, knowing no 
language but her own, and much marked with the small- 
pox. His consternation v/as extreme ; he could hardly 
utter a word, and forgot to take from his pocket the 
present which he had prepared. Foreigners in those 
days were sometimes half surprised and more than half 
amused at our caring so much for female beauty ; and 
Henry was as English in this point as his father had 
been. Hardly would he have submitted to such an 
infliction even for a cherished purpose of his own, much 
less for one with which he only half sympathised. Could 
not a pre-contract be made out ? No, the lady was very 
decidedly free; and after all it would not do to throw 
the Duke into the alliance between Charles and Francis, 
which was now assuming the most threatening appear- 
ance, Charles being actually on a visit to the French 
Court and ominously refusing all enquiry into the treat- 
ment of Englishmen in Spain by the Inquisition. So the 
marriage took place on the 6th of January, 1540, hateful 
though it was to the bridegroom, and unpopular because 
of the risk from it to Flemish trade. For the next 
five months a life-and-death struggle went on between 
the two religious parties. Cromv/ell seemed for a while 
to be scoring at all points. He was created Earl of 
Essex on the 17th of April, and afterwards a Knight of 



2i6 TJie Early Tudors. 1540 

the Garter, and succeeded in imprisoning- some of his 
antagonists or driving them from the Council. Jt was 
expected every day that Gardiner would be sent to the 
Tower. The minister also carried the attainder of some 
priests, once of Queen Katherine's household, who had 
been ' contumacious ' ever since ; and succeeded in check- 
ing the action of the Six Articles, and in abolishing 
many rights of sanctuary. But all the time his main 
scheme was collapsing miserably. He could not persuade 
Francis to join the league of Protestant Germany, and 
its members in alarm made their peace with Charles for 
the time. This was the opportunity for which Ci-omwell's 
enemies had been waiting ; now their charges, carefully 
gathered for years, might securely be hurled at him. 
On the loth of June Henry allowed him to be arrested at 
the Council-table, the other members loudly proclaiming 
him a traitor and tearmg the ribbon of the Garter from 
his neck. He was immediately attainted on eight 
charges, the substance of which was that he had planned 
to crush the nobles of England, and to form a con- 
federacy of heretics in the country by means of which 
he might raise a rebellion. He was truly or falsely sworn 
to have said that, if the King and realm varied from his 
opinions, he would fight against them sword in hand, 
and that, if he lived a year or two, he would bring 
matters to such a state, that the King would have no 
power to change it even if he desired. Events then 
rushed on with lightning speed. The attainder was passed 
by acclamation about the 19th of June; on the ist of July 
Norfolk and the new government carried a Bill for the 
better observance of the Six Articles ; on the 7th the 
King's late marriage was brought before Convocation 
and annulled on the wonderful plea that it had been ' ex- 
torted under compulsion by external causes ; ' on the 



1540 Fall of CroviivcU. 217 

1 2th an Act of Parliament was carried to the same effect, 
and Anne of Cleves, intending to remain in England, 
was endowed with 3,000/. a year and the grotesque title 
of the 'King's Sister.' On the 28th Cromwell laid his 
head on the block, and two days later Barnes, Garrett, 
and Jerome, who had rashly put them.selves forward as 
opponents of Gardiner, were sent to the stake as gain- 
sayers of the Six Articles ; the priests attainted by 
Cromwell being hanged at the same place and time for 
denying the Supremacy. Soon after this. Parliament, 
which had in the previous year given to Henry's procla- 
mations the force of laws (thus going near to establish a 
kind of Turkish despotism in the State), did nearly the 
same in Church matters by enabling a committee of the 
Archbishops, Bishops, and certain doctors of divinity 
acting with the King's sanction (that is, the King himself) 
to declare absolutely the judgment of the English Church 
on all questions of theology, whether raised here or on 
the Continent, and to enforce it by pains and penalties. 

In April of this year, James V. of Scotland, on his way 
back from France, stopped for a short time off Scar- 
borough and boldly received a deputation of 
Yorkshire gentlemen asking for the help formation in 
against Henry which he was well disposed to 
grant. After 1524 he had soon begun drifting back 
towards the French alliance. True the negotiations for 
his marriage with Mary were more than once renewed, 
but neither side would take the first step — the Scottish 
statesmen declaring that a lasting peace would be easy 
after the marriage, and Henry wishing for a reliable 
treaty before it. Till Margaret's divorce from Angus 
was granted in 1528, and she was allowed to marry 
a new favourite. Lord Methuen, she had been quite 
resolved ' to seek for help wherever she could find it ; ' 



2i8 TJie Early Tmiors. 1540 

and as none came from Henry, this meant that she 
would appeal to France. Therefore two political parties 
became clearly defined ; that of Lords Angus, Lennox, 
Murray, Glencairn, and Sir George Douglas, who were 
prepared to go all lengths for the English connection, 
being opposed to Methuen, Arran, and James and David 
Beton, successive Archbishops of St. Andrew's, who 
were in the French interest. From 1528 forward the 
beginnings of the Reformation in England made the 
Scots anti-reformers, inclined to ally themselves with our 
enemies still more closely, and to mark their religious 
zeal by persecution. Thus Patrick Hamilton, the proto- 
martyr of the Scottish Reformation, was burned in that 
year ' for denying pilgrimage, purgatory, prayer to the 
saints, and such trifles,' says Knox ; and for some time 
there was an exodus from Scotland of gentlemen and 
clerks escaping with their lives from charges of reading 
the Bible in English, and asking Lord Dacre for relief 
when they were across the Border. James, as time went 
on, was heard to boast that he was to be made Duke of 
York, not by his uncle, but by the Emperor ; and when 
Henry went to York to have an interview with him, the 
rash young man was induced by the bribes of the Church 
party to break his engagement, thus giving up the chance 
of seeing how widely different from his own kingdom 
was that which might fall to him as Henry's son-in-law, 
and which his grandson was at length to inherit. As the 
Catholic partisans were quite determined to stop the 
English negotiations altogether, they also induced James 
to marry Magdalen, the beautiful, but delicate daughter 
of Francis I., who died within a few months from the 
change of climate. It was in bringing home his bride 
that he received the Scarborough deputation, and heard 
how they were ' robbed and murdered ' and how much they 



1543 Sokuay Moss. i\C) 

longed for him to come and ' have all. ' On arriving at 
Leith he bade farther defiance to England by prosecuting 
some of Angus's relations and supporters ; his sister, Lady 
Glamis, a woman of great beauty and intelligence, was 
burned alive for treason, as Lady Bulmer had been in 
England. After Magdalen's death, Henry renewed his 
advances ; but found James fatally resolved on a second 
French wife, Mary of Guise, the widow of the Due dj 
Longueville, whom he married in June 1538. Henry 
meanwhile was preparing two deadly blows against his 
recreant nephew. The first of these was an attempt to 
get him kidnapped while hunting on the Border. A 
paper still remains in which the English Council remark 
that they find in the scheme ' many difficulties, above all 
the risk of a struggle in which James might be killed, 
and the infamy thence arising.' They admit that the 
proposer. Sir Robert Wharton, an English commander 
on the Border, may have had a ' good meaning ' in pro- 
posing it, but think that he ought to be strictly charged 
to carry it no farther, and not to communicate it to any 
living creature. The second scheme bore a still more 
threatening aspect; for Henry ordered that search should 
be made by Lee, the Archbishop of York, for all ancient 
records of homage paid by Scotland to England, mani- 
festly intending to take up this old quarrel where Edward 
II. had been compelled to leave it. He also allowed his 
Parliament in an address to him to call James an ' usurper 
of the kingdom which rightly belonged to his Majesty.' 

Thus the two parties were bent on a war 
which might have wrecked the fortunes of Moss. 
both countries. Fortunately neither possessed j^^mL v. 
organising power sufficient for a great enter- Attempts 
prise ; and though each side was well in- 
clined to push on with reckless haste, material of war was 



220 The Early Tudors. 154.2 

almost entirely wanting. The Duke of Norfolk was ordered 
to advance with 30,000 men by Berwick to the Lothians, 
but provisions soon failed him, and he was obliged to 
disband his troops for fear of starvation On this James 
vindictively insisted on crossing the Eske and ravaging 
Cumberland ; but the nobles told him that they had done 
their feudal duty in defending Scotland, and had no idea 
of going any farther. Maddened at their refusal, he de- 
clared that they were all ti'aitors, and not obscurely 
hinted that he should sweep off a hundred of them by 
proscription. Meanwhile he called for volunteers, who 
were to meet at Lochmaben and receive their orders 
there ; and about 10,000 men obeyed the summons. It 
was only when they were already in England that they 
found they were to be commanded, not by the King in 
person, but by Oliver Sinclair, a most unpopular Court- 
favourite. This produced a commotion in the army, in 
the midst of which they were suddenly charged by a few 
hundreds of English Border horsemen. Imagining that 
Norfolk was upon them, they actually turned and fled 
homewards; but, missing the way, most of them reached 
the Solway when the tide was up, and were either 
drowned in attempting to cross it or taken prisoners on 
the English side. The King had remained at Caerlave- 
rock Castle during the expedition ; he now returned in 
the deepest dejection to Falkland, with bad news dogging 
him at every step and his health daily drooping more and 
more. His two infant sons had both died shortly before, 
and Mary of Guise was expecting her third confinement 
at Edinburgh. On the 7th of December, 1542, the news 
came of the birth of another Mary, so soon to be known 
by the fated name ' Queen of Scots.' ' It came with a lass 
and it will go with a lass,' said the hapless father, in allu- 
sion to the throne coming to the Stewarts by a daughter 



1543 ' Solway Moss. 221 

of Bruce ; and a week latter he died, leaving the govern- 
ment in the hands of the Earl of Arran, the head of the 
Hamiltons, who claimed it because of his father's mar- 
riage with James IIl.'s sister, which made him next of kin 
to the infant Queen. The new Regent at once imprisoned 
the leaders of the French party, and wrote to Henry a 
letter of appeal, asking indulgence for the baby kins- 
woman who, by a calamity which seemed to bring back 
the days of Flodden, was now the hope of her country. 
Henry replied by offering to marry his son to the infant, 
and strongly endeavouring to win over the prisoners 
of Solway Moss to his plan, which was that Mary should 
at once be sent to England for education, that Edinburgh, 
Stirling, and Dumbarton should receive English garri- 
sons, and that Cardinal Beton, the great enemy of Eng- 
land, should be transferred to an English prison. The 
Scots on their part were willing to accept of the marriage, 
but only on the absurd condition that, if ever the two 
crowns were on one head, an independent Regency of 
Scotland should for the time belong of right to the Arran 
family. Henry's other conditions would, they declared, 
be resisted by every man, woman, and child in Scotland. 
After much uncertainty, a treaty was at last signed at 
Greenwich (July i, 1543) providing for an alliance be- 
tween the countries during the life of the two sovereigns, 
and one year more ; the Queen was now to be allowed to 
stay with her mother till the age of ten. In case the 
crowns were united, the liberties of Scotland were fully 
guaranteed ; if the infant Mary ever became a childless 
widow, she was to resume possession of her kingdom in 
peace. The settlement seemed hopeful, yet the bond 
was torn up almost before it was drawn by the audacity 
of Cardinal Beton, who carried off Mary from Linlithgow 
to Stirling Castle, where she was in the power of his parti- 



222 The Early Tudors, IS37- 

sans; and onthisevenArranhimself, unable any longer to 
stem the torrent of popular longing for independence, 
joined the Romish party, cancelled the Greenwich treaty, 
withdrew a recently granted permission to read the Bible, 
and announced that heretics would be prosecuted accord- 
ing to Church law. Though the murder of Beton in 1 546 
a,t St. Andrews (to which Henry, as Mr. Burton has fully 
shown, was accessory before the fact) seemed likely to 
help towards union with England, yet it had the opposite 
effect ; for in the year after the Cardinal's death many of the 
miost vigorous spirits of the English party (including John 
Knox), after holding St. Andrews for a time, were cap- 
tured by a French army and sent as prisoners to France, 
leaving no one who could supply their place. It was little 
comfort that an English force under Lords Lisle and 
Hertford captured and burned Leith and Edinburgh in 
the following year, besides wasting Fifeshire, which sel- 
dom suffered in such wars. The burning of 243 villages 
and 192 towns was not the way to produce kinder feelings 
in Scotland, or make the people more content to accept 
real union. 

Ireland had also had its own disorders after the death of 

Lord Thomas Fitzgerald in 1537. Lord Leonard Grey, 

his captor, was ordered to put down resist- 

Leonard ^"^e to English authority in the West. To 

Grey in ^-^^ x.2J^ he bravclv addresscd himself, storm- 

ireland. _ _ ' 

ing various castles on the Shannon, and, 
above all, capturing ' Brene's Bridge ' over that river near 
Limerick, which was so strongly fortified with marble works 
that artillery could make no impression on it, while the 
ramparts themselves could be approached only across 
two broken arches which had to be spanned with scaling- 
ladders. But the tide of victory was almost immediately 
checked by want of money ; and it was too clear that the 



-1542 Irish Affairs. 223 

Irish government was farther than ever from the chance 
of pa5ang its own way. Stung by this disappointment, 
Lord Leonard was thenceforward at constant variance 
with his Council, whom he treated most harshly and 
overbearingly ; while on service he disgusted his best 
officers by requiring the impossible and disgracing them 
if they refused to attempt it. The Dublin Parliament now 
ventured on throwing out a Bill for the dissolution of the 
Irish monasteries ; and enmity to England daily produced 
the same effects as in Scotland, making the people more 
and more ardent partisans of Rome. At this juncture 
Cromwell's fall began to be expected ; and Grey, who 
was intimate with the Duke of Norfolk, thought that he 
might further a reaction in Ireland, such as his leader 
was accomplishing at home. He therefore favoured the 
bishops most opposed to the Reformation, and went so 
far as to entrust many important charges to the ever- 
rebellious Fitzgerald family — with which, as we have 
seen, he was connected by marriage — and to maintain a 
bishop made by the Pope, whose appointment he was 
expressly ordered to disallow. All this, too, was during 
the perilous times when the fear of the Emperor's in- 
vading Ireland was not yet at an end. He then made a 
progress through the rebellious districts, and reported to 
Henry that his reception had been most excellent. But 
even he himself soon discovered that he had been de- 
ceived ; his new friends were manifestly conspii'ing to 
promote the foreign invasion, and in October, 1 539, he had 
to attack and defeat the rebellious chiefs on the borders 
of Ulster. After this he reconciled himself with Orm.ond 
and the loyalist nobles whom he had offended, and asked 
for a few weeks' leave of absence from his government. 
This was allowed, but his locum tencns, Sir W. Brereton, 
soon informed Henry of new insurrections, the direct 



224 The Early Tiidors. 1 540-1 

effects of Grey's wrongheadedness. The King sent the 
Deputy to the Tower, and ordered the chief members of 
the Irish Council to come over and give their evidence 
against him. It was sworn that Grey had abused those who 
spoke ill of Cardinal Pole, that he had taken bribes from 
Irish chiefs, had connived at their attacks on the more 
loyal, and had released from prison, untried, men who 
had been committed for treason. Above all the incredi- 
ble charge was hinted, though not expressly made against 
him, that he had left behind him in the West some of the 
King's guns, with the intention that they should be found 
and used by the invaders. In hope of mercy, Grey 
pleaded guilty to his actual indictment, and was executed 
on the 28th of June, 1540. St. Leger, his successor in 
office, carried out the suppression of the monasteries, and 
by judicious distribution of the spoils managed to procure 
for the home-government a certain respite from Irish 
troubles. 

The King within a few days of his release from Anne 
of Cleves married Katherine Howard, another niece of 
T^ , . the Duke of Norfolk, a fascinating girl of 

Howard nineteen, for whose perfections he was 

Death of ^ 

Lady Salis- Strongly inclined to have a special service 
"'^^' of thanksgiving drawn up. The poor crea- 

ture had, however, young as she was, dishonoured herself 
before marriage, and now felt obliged, as Queen, to give 
appointments about her person by way of hush-money 
to the very men who ought to have kept farthest from 
her. All her terrible secrets soon came out ; and to 
Cranmer M'as entrusted the commission of telling Henry 
how he had been deceived. The only chance of life which 
remained to Katherine was that she should make the 
common ' pre-contract ' excuse ; but, with a truthfulness 
which went far to redeein her errors, she refused to make 



1 541 ■ Hcnr-ys Last French War. 11^ 

any such statement, and was attainted in Parliament for 
high treason, and beheaded on the 12th of February, 1542 ; 
with her suffered Lady Rochford, who had before done 
much to ruin her sister-in-law Anne Boleyn. On the 
27th of May in the preceding year the noble old Countess 
of Salisbury, almost the only reinaining Plantagenet, was 
accused for continuing, or being supposed to continue, a 
treasonable correspondence with her son Cardinal Pole. 
She loudly asserted her innocence on the scaffold, refusing 
to kneel at the block, and telling the executioner that he 
might get her head as he could — a proceeding which was 
considered strangely presumptuous and undutiful. Some- 
what more to Henry's credit was the execution of Lord 
Dacre of the South, with three companions, for having 
caused the death of a gamekeeper while engaged, by way 
of a frolic, in shooting deer in a neighbour's park without 
leave asked. Thus sternly was the principle vindicated 
that homicide is murder if done in the course of an 
action otherwise illegal ; yet true equity would have 
inflicted death only on the person who actually struck the 
fatal blow. 



CHAPTER XVL 



HENRY S LAST FRENCH WAR. CLOSE AND RESULTS 

OF THE REIGN. 

1 541. 

Seldom has royal ambition exposed Europe to such 
deadly peril and suffering as when in the latter part of 
Francis I.'s reign he joined with the Turks. ^, , ,, 

° ■' . Charles V. 

Even at the moment when he gave up his fails at 
sword at Pavia, he ordered a servant in- ^^^' 
stantly to take his ring to the Sultan as an appeal for 
P 



226 The Early Tudors. I543 

help. And in the times which followed his liberation 
from captivity he constantly used the Turkish alliance 
for the purposes of his ambition, inducing Sultan Soliman 
to attack Austria and Hungary and to send his corsairs 
to all the seaboard of the Empire, while he himself, with a 
child's pertinacity, tried once more for Milan. Charles V., 
on the contrary, though his difficulties both from France 
and from the Protestant States of Germany were immense, 
still carried on a determined war against the Porte. He 
had always intended to make his conquest of Tunis in 
1535 the stepping-stone to Algiers, which was a more im- 
portant focus of piracy, and nearer his Spanish dominions. 
To carry out this plan, he sent thither a magnificent fleet 
and army in October, 1541, in spite of all warning that it 
was too late in the year for such an expedition. The 
result was that a storm came on before the troops could 
land their material, and half the ships and men were 
miserably lost. Francis, overjoyed at his rival's defeat, 
forthwith arranged attacks upon him from Constantinople 
and Venice on the one side, and from Denmark, Sweden, 
and the German Protestant League on the other. The 
scheme was detestable on many grounds ; for it gave a 
fresh spur to Soliman, who had in the previous July 
overthrown the combined forces of Austria and Hungary 
and occupied the latter country ; besides which Francis 
was fully purposed to atone for his alliance with Mo- 
hammedans and Protestants abroad by the most horrid 
of religious persecutions at home. His military plan 
was that in the summer of 1 543 the Turkish fleets should 
ravage all Charles's Italian seaboard, while he himself 
should invade the Emperor's dominions by the open gates 
of Gelderland and Cleves. 

But by this time Henry, vexed indeed at some French 
backslidings in money matters and at their support of hifi 



1543 Henry's Last French War. 227 

enemies in Scotland, but also acting at last upon reasons 
of sound European policy, had agreed with ^, . . 

'■ i. J • o Henry joins 

the Emperor that Francis must be compelled Charles 
to break his present alliance with the Francis and 
Turks and to repay to Charles and the the Turks. 
Diet the money spent by them on the earlier Turkish 
wars which he had occasioned. The first-fruits of this 
combination were the rejection, already related, of the 
Greenwich Treaty by the French party in Scotland, 
and the final breaking down of the scheme of union, 
The war began at once ; and Charles, with Gardiner 
attending him as English commissioner, stormed the 
city of Diiren, massacred its inhabitants, and forced the 
Duke of Cleves to beg for mercy. About 10,000 Eng- 
lishmen joined their great ally at the siege of Landr6cies, 
which had been taken and fortified as a place of arms by 
the French earlier in the year. The politic Charles 
expressed the utm.ost admiration for his confederates, 
declaring that he would live and die with them, and they 
should be his guards. While the siege went on, the 
French fleet in the Mediterranean was actually co- 
operating with the Algerine pirate Barbarossa in an 
attack on Nice, the last possession which Francis had 
left to the Duke of Savoy. This alliance, however, was 
ultimately fatal to Francis's plans ; for it excited such 
horror in Germany that Charles was able at the Diet of 
Spires to proclaim war anew in the name of the whole 
Empire against the two enemies of Christendom, whose 
fleets, he said, were at that moment riding side by side 
in a Provencal harbour. The Diet voted 24,000 men 
and an universal poll-tax. Henry on his part persisted 
in the war in order to weaken French influence on 
Scotland. He had now reinforced his army up to 30,000 



228 The Early Tiidors. 1543 

men, and had also 25,000 Germans under his command. 
With these he agreed to march on Paris from the north, 
while the Emperor reached it by the valley of the Marne. 
Fortunately for France this scheme was not carried out. 
Henry, whose many wars had taught him little general- 
ship, stopped to besiege Boulogne, which held out till Sep- 
tember 14, and thus by its steadiness made Henry miss 
the rendezvous. Finding that he could not make head 
alone against the French, Charles fell back on Soissons, 
and, breaking his engagement not to make a separate 
peace, signed the treaty of Crepy, by which Francis 
agreed to abandon the Turks, to help in the recovery of 
Hungary from them, and to join Charles in his suspended 
struggle with Protestantism. The Emperor wanted, in 
fact, one thing above all others, the defeat and dispersion 
of the Smalkaldic League, which had become much 
stronger and more dangerous by the accession of Den- 
mark. Indeed he was not wrong in supposing that 
events were now deciding the future of religion in 
Europe. Up to this time there had been hope that the 
Protestants might rejoin Rome, and in 1541 the most 
evangelical members of the Papal Church had held a 
conference at Ratisbon to bring this about. But it had 
failed, and its Italian members had either decided to 
become Protestants or contented themselves with ad- 
hering to Catholicism as it was. As this kind of con- 
ciliation had become impossible. Pope Paul III. resolved 
to reform the Church of Rome on her own principles, 
and with Jesuitism and the Inquisition for her mainstays. 
For this purpose he gave notice that the first session of 
the long-expected Council would be held on March 15, 
1545, at Trent in the Tyrol. To this the Protestants were 
not to be admitted, even if they still desired it ; indeed 
one of the first resolutions of the Council was for the 



1545 Henrys Last French War. 229 

sterner war against them which led to their defeat at 
Miihlberg in 1 547. 

Francis on his side was equally determined to put 
down heresy in his own dominions ; indeed, as soon as 
the peace of Crepy made Protestant allies 

. . French 

needless, he seized the opportunity to murder attack on 
3,000 inoffensive Vaudois. But he was quite °' ^™°" 
equally anxious to revenge himself for the fright which 
England had given him by the invasion of France ; 
therefore, collecting in Normandy a fleet of 235 vessels 
of all sizes, he directed part of them to convey a force to 
Scotland, and the rest to make a descent at the nearest 
point of England, while his land army blockaded the 
Castle of Boulogne. As in the case of the Armada long 
afterwards, an untoward accident marked the starting; 
for the King's cooks set fire by carelessness to the largest 
vessel of the fleet, on board which he was giving an enter- 
taiinent. On the i8th of July, 1545, the ships were off the 
Isle of Wight. Our fleet, of only sixty ships, being not 
strong enough to defend the Solent, ran for the shelter of 
the batteries, and a calm ensuing, was in great danger from 
the enemy's galleys, which could fire at the ships without 
suffei'ing in return, as their oars enabled them to move 
about quickly and thus baffle the English aim. Pres- 
ently a breeze sprang up, and we advanced again ; but 
one large vessel, the ' Mary Rose,' was either sunk, as 
French accounts will have it, by their fire, or, according 
to our own, lost — as the ' Eurydice ' was in our own 
memory — by heeling over too far, so that the sea came 
through her lower-deck ports. Annebaut, the French 
admiral, then proposed to run up and bombard Ports- 
mouth ; but the pilots declared it impossible either to 
carry the fleet through the obstacles, or, if this were 
done, to anchor in such a tideway. He then landed 



230 The Early Tudors. 1545 

several bodies of men on the Isle of Wight, with the in- 
tention of holding and fortifying several points in it ; but 
the Act of 1487 had long ago restored its population, and 
the railitia under Sir Edward Bellingham were able to 
frustrate all such attempts. Finding he could make no 
impression, Annebaut then ran over to France, dis- 
charged most of his land forces, and, returning to the 
English coast, made a descent at Seaford, which the 
Sussex militia dealt with, and seemed on the point of 
fighting with Lords Lisle and Surrey off Shoreham. But 
the hot August weather spoiled his provisions and bred 
disease in his still crowded vessels ; his chance was 
over, and he was obliged to retreat to Havre. Though 
the French pi-essed with all vigour the siege of Boulogne, 
or rather of the old citadel on the heights whose pic- 
turesque ramparts still remain, yet Sir Edward Poynings 
held out for the whole winter of 1545, with typhus 
ravaging both armies, and in the next June Henry agreed 
to surrender the place in eight years for a ransom 
of 5,000,000 francs. In the treaty of peace Scotland was 
included, so that French influence still remained supreme 
there. 

Next came, as usual, the difficulty of finding the 
million and a half which the war had cost. A Benevo- 
lence had been raised for it in \^\^ — it was 

The cur- , , - ^ ^ ^ , ^^/ . 

rencyde- then that Alderman Rock, on refusmg his 

quota, was ordered off for service as a private 
soldier on the Scottish Border. This had produced about 
60,000/., and the remains of a subsidy were still avail- 
able ; the balance was now provided by a debasement of 
the currency — of all modes of taxation the one which 
creates most distress, by throwing all contracts into dis- 
order, reducing the value of fixed wages and incomes, and 
making recovery impossible by driving good money out 



1546 Henrys Last French War. 231 

of circulation. Yet Henry by a succession of tamperings 
reduced the quantity of silver in an ounce of coin first 
to half an ounce, and later to six pennyweights nearly — 
the regular quantity being rather more than eighteen 
pennyweights. The evil therefore was a growing one ; 
nor was it remedied till the first year of Elizabeth, when 
the coinage was at length restored by the means so 
graphically described by Mr. Froude. 

Peace was concluded with France on the 5th of June, 
1 546 ; a trifling quarrel had all but plunged us meantime 
into a war with the Emperor. For an English captain, 
when ill-treated and robbed by the Inquisition in Spain, 
had retaliated on the first Spanish vessel which he met 
at sea. Henry refused to surrender the man, as he had 
been wronged first ; therefore Charles put an embargo on 
English vessels in his ports, and we in turn seized two 
Spanish treasure-ships in the Channel. Fortunately 
wiser counsels at last prevailed, and no war followed. 

Before the end of the French conflict Lord Surrey 
had been deeply vexed at finding himself superseded in 
the command by Lord Hertford ; and, the ^ 

. Execution 

King's death bemg shortly expected, he seems of Lord 
to have made known without the least caution "'"'^^y- 
his views on the situation. ' In case of God taking his 
Majesty to himself,' the proper guardian for the young 
Prince Edward would, he declared, be his father, the 
Duke of Norfolk. Others bore witness that he had said 
— not indeed to them, but to others — that when the King 
died he, Surrey, would deal sharply with the low-born 
Privy Councillors. Another charge was, considering the 
ideas of the time, a very serious one indeed. The 
Duchess, Surrey's mother, was a daughter of the late 
Duke of Buckingham ; hence, as we have seen, Surrey 
could claim royal descent, and he had some time before 



232 The Early Tudors, 1546 

applied to the Heralds' College to be allowed to quarter 
the royal arms on the first instead of the second division 
of his shield, which only the family of the reigning 
king were entitled to do. It must be recollected that 
Henry had in 1528 ordered a heraldic visitation of the 
country which was to be repeated every thirty years; 
and such an assumption as Surrey's was an offence which 
had been severely dealt with in the case of Edward 
Hastings, who was imprisoned for sixteen years for not 
submitting his coat to the judgment of a Court Military. 
Moreover the precise alteration made by Surrey had both 
precedent and explanation in the case of Edward III., 
who symbolised his claim to the throne of France by 
transferring the lilies from the second to the first quarter 
of his shield. No doubt, therefore, such a change was 
constructively treasonable ; and the notion of degrees in 
treason or of any punishment for it short of death never 
seems to have found its way into the absolute logic of 
Henry's mind. Another charge against Lord Surrey was 
that he ' delighted to converse with foreigners and con- 
form his behaviour to theirs ' — an unkindly one, surely, to 
bring against the poet who had done so much to infuse 
Italian grace into the rugged forms of English poetry. 
His own sister, the widowed Duchess of Richmond, 
contributed to his ru-in by confessing, when questioned 
by the Council, that Surrey had urged her to use her 
personal attractions to captivate her father-in-law ; but 
Henry's state of health since Richmond's death in 1536 
suggests that there must have been some misunder- 
standing here. On these charges (or some of them) 
Surrey was tried at the Guildhall, condemned, and exe- 
cuted ; the Duke, his father, Avas attainted in Parliament, 
and saved only by Henry's death a few hours before the 
time appointed for him to go the way of More and Crom- 



1546 Last Persecutions. 233 

well. Considering that the evidence in these cases was 
chiefly hearsay, we may hope that they tended to produce 
the Act which immediately afterwards made it capital to 
bring anonymous charges of treason without afterwards 
coming forward to prove them. 

Of the second persecution under the Six Articles the 
date is unknown ; five persons perished in it. The next 
was in 1543, when Filmer, Testwood, and 
Peerson were burned under Windsor Castle persecu- ^^' 
for unseemly jesting on religion, and Mer- ''°"|'' ^'f 
beck, the Church musician to whom the man- tions. 
ner of intoning our services is mainly due, 
narrowly escaped the same fate — it is said for making a 
Concordance of the New Testament. 'Poor innocents !' 
Henry had exclaimed, on hearing how the men died ; and 
in the same spirit he now interfered to protect the deposed 
Bishop Latimer, and a physician named Huick who ap- 
pealed to him. In 1546 the fourth and last persecution 
took place, when Lascelles, a gentleman of the Bed- 
chamber, a priest named Belemian, and Adams, a tailor, 
suffered for the still unpardonable offence of denying 
transubstantiation. But their fame has been eclipsed by 
that of Anne Ascue, a young and beautiful woman who 
was accused on the same point. With the consequences 
full in view, this heroine wrote, as an account of her 
belief, ' The bread is but a remembrance of His death, or 
a sacrament of thanksgiving for it.' It gives a thrill of 
anger even now to hear that the Lord Chancellor and 
Solicitor-General tortured her again and again to find 
out who favored her. She was burned, and the place 
watched all night, to hinder her friends from doing 
reverence to her ashes and arrest them if they tried. 
A little earlier than this an Act of Parliament had 
placed in Henry's hands the ' chantries ' of the kingdom 



234 The Early Tudors. 1546- 

— that is, the innumerable foundations for private masses 
in cathedrals and other churches — and with them the 
' colleges and hospitals,' requesting him to take the pro- 
perty ' for his wars and the maintenance of his dignity.' 
At the Universities Henry used the power thus given 
him to compel the surrender of several Cambridge halls 
and to found Trinity College out of their collective pro- 
perty ; its larger endowments, however, are due not to 
him but to Queen Mary. In the same spirit Henry 
left to the citizens of London the ancient Priory of St. 
Bartholomew to be a hospital for the poor. 

Within a few days of the death of Katherine Howard 
the King married Katherine Parr, the widow of the Lord 

Latimer who had been engaged in the Pil- 
Parr.^"°* grimage of Grace and pardoned after it. This 

lady was a most kind stepmother to all his 
children, and a first-rate nurse to himself. Her Cam- 
bridge correspondents called her ' Reginadoctissima,' and 
their admiration is justified by her book of devotion called 
the ' Lamentacion of a Sinner.' She was inclined to 
Protestantism, her almoner being Miles Coverdale ; is 
said to have interceded for Merbeck, and certainly con- 
tributed much to the conviction for perjury of Dr. London, 
who, after distinguishing himself in the Visitation of the 
Monasteries, had undertaken the congenial task of forging 
evidences in cases of heresy. This made Chancellor 
Wriothesley and Bishop Gardiner her bitter enemies ; and, 
according to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, they succeeded in 
inducing the King to have articles of heresy drawn out 
against her, as having received forbidden books from her 
sister. Lady Herbert. Henry, it appears, had been an- 
noyed by her pressing him strongly to allow the general use 
of the tran^ated Bible, and therefore gave his consent to 
the articles ; Wriothesley, however, accidentally dropped 



-1547 Last Persecutions. 235 

the paper containing them, and thus it came to Kather- 
ine's knowledge. She at first gave herself up for lost, but 
presently succeeded in persuading her husband that, if 
she had ever spoken to him on theology, it was in order 
to be herself instructed. It is supposed that the torture of 
Anne Ascue was intended to elicit evidence against the 
Queen ; but if so, it failed signally of its purpose. 

On Friday the 28th of January, 1547, Norfolk was to die 
at nine in the morning; but when that time struck Henry 
had been dead eight hours, and the Duke was 
safe. Late on the preceding evening the King Henry.° 
had been told that his end was near ; on which 
he characteristically said that as his physicians had con- 
demned him, their work was over, and he wanted no more 
interference from them. He would send for no one but 
Cranmer, and put this off so long that when the Arch- 
bishop arrived he could only press his hand as a sign 
that he looked for mercy through Christ. He desired to 
be buried at Windsor in the same tomb with Queen Jane ; 
and, like his father, ordered that masses should be said 
there ' perpetually while the world shall endure.' Finally 
with unwavering faith he asked for the intercession of 
the Blessed Virgin and the Saints. During his absence 
at Boulogne in 1544 Queen Katherine had been his 
Regent; but, to her great disappointment, she found the 
power given by Henry's will to a Council of Regency 
headed by Cranmer. As Parhament had in 1536 allowed 
the King to dispose of the crown by will, he placed first 
Mary and then Ehzabeth in succession after Edward, on 
condition that they married only with the royal consent. 
Foreseeing in all probability the marriage which so very 
soon took place between Katherine and Sir Thomas 
Seymour, the lover from whom he had taken her, he 
allowed her only a moderate provision. 



236 The Early Ttcdors. 1546- 

At his death Henry left the Church still under the 

Six Articles, though procedure according to them had 

on purpose been made more difificult. Its 

Henry s 

influence on position had also been defined by the ' Neces- 
sary Doctrme and Erudition of a Christian 
Man ' (generally called the ' King's Book '), which was 
printed for the first time in 1 544, having been accepted by 
Parliament in the previous year. Many of its statements 
are, as we might expect, more Roman in tone than those 
of its predecessor, the ' Bishops' Book.' But fortunately 
for the Church there had grown up besides these formu- 
laries something of far better omen for the future. Eras- 
mus had adopted in the years from 15 16 to 1535 the bold 
course of publishing successive editions of the Greek 
Testament based upon, in great part, though not entirely, 
the evidence of MSS. ; this was in effect a declaration 
that St. Jerome's Latin translation, generally called the 
Vulgate, had not really the final and conclusive authority 
ascribed to it by the Roman Church. His Paraphrases 
also set the good example of explaining all passages with 
their full context, instead of taking a verse here and there 
and drawing random inferences from it, in the manner 
of which we have seen an example in the discussions 
on the exemption of the clergy from the civil Courts. 
Moreover, the Bible had, as we have seen, been twice 
translated, and though Tyndal suffered martyrdom at 
Vilvorde, and the circulation of his English Bible 
was fenced about with many restrictions and sometimes 
nearly stopped, it had still been publicly declared to be 
'the only, touchstone of true learning.' The Lord's 
Prayer and the Ten Commandments had been taught in 
Enghsh since 1539; in 1543 and 1544 English litanies 
were used by authority, and Cranmer also translated 
the Te Deum and other hymns 'in order that all 



-1547 Advajice of ProtestajiUsm. 237 

such as were ignorant of any strange or foreign speech 
might have what to pray in their own famiUar and 
acquainted tongue with fruit and understanding. Thus 
everything was ready for the great work of Edward's first 
years, the drawing up of the Book of Common Prayer 
in a form hke that which v/e still have, though in some 
points nearer to that now used by the Episcopal Churches 
in Scotland and America. Roman Catholic writers have 
constantly assumed not only that these formularies are 
heretical, but that the effect of Henry's ordinances has 
been to enslave the Church of England to the State. 
The former of these points can hardly be discussed in a 
work like the present. On the latter it will be enough to 
remark once more that at the time it was absolutely nec- 
essary to check the use by the clergy of their independent 
powers. It deeply concerned the very being of religion 
in England that priests should neither kill their parish- 
ioners for Christ's sake, nor plot against their property, 
nor claim immunity from crime as a privilege of their 
order ; hardly anything, indeed, could be more violent 
and therefore more anti-Christian than their attempts to 
compel belief by penalties. It cannot be doubted that 
Henry's Parliament did rightly in depriving them of 
powers so much misused ; nor has anything since 
occurred to make us wish the changes undone. It has 
been well that the sturdy sense of Parliament should 
have to be persuaded before religious changes could be 
made ; well, too, at least in times when the people have 
cared for religion, that bishops should be chosen, not 
according to the narrow standard of purely clerical 
electors, but by a Minister of the Crown who, with every 
reason both of feeling and interest to select wise and 
practical men for the office, can also resist currents of 
temporary Church feeling and in some degree see events 



238 The Early Tudors. 1546- 

as history will see them. Under no other institutions, 
perhaps, would the Church, by losing step by step all 
compulsory powers, have been so wholesomely trained 
and so perpetually encouraged to rely on persuasion 
only, thus gaining a strength which she never could 
have dreamed of in her masterful days. And although 
agitation has sometimes been created in our own time 
by the sentences of certain civil Courts in Church ques- 
tions, yet such judgments have been generally acqui- 
esced in when the immediate stir has been over, and 
found not in any way to lower the Church or to fetter her 
development. It would be hard to point to any one good 
thing desired by the Church which has been hindered 
by her relations to the State, or to any evil thing to 
which they have given a longer life. If uncorrected 
abuses still exist, we may be sure that they remain so 
because members of the Church have not yet made up 
their minds that they are intolerable, and not because, 
the law being what it is, such things must needs live on 
to vex us however much we may dislike them. 

The laws affecting religion occupy so large a space in 
this reign that those on civil matters are apt to escape 

notice, though many of them well deserve to 
Henry' VIII. ^^ remembered. Such were those affecting 

beggars, who, if really impotent, were to have 
written leave to ask alms in a specified district ; if ' whole 
and mighty in body ' were to be whipped tlie first time 
they begged and sent home to their own parish, where by 
another law the overseers were bound to employ them. 
If any such person offended a second time, the gristle of his 
ear was to be cut off, besides a whipping ; and for a third 
offence he was to die as an enemy of the commonwealth. 
On the same principle of hatred to people with no visible 
livelihood all Gypsies were in 1 530 sent out of the country. 



-1 547 Civil Laws of the Reign. 239 

Another kind of poverty which the age would not tolerate 
was that of the ' poor and broken bankrupt ;' it was held 
that 'the crime and its name were both of foreign 
growth,' and the surrender of all the insolvent's property 
would never give him a discharge till the last farthing 
was paid. An Act of 1 546 repealed the old laws of usury, 
allowing interest to be charged up to 10 per cent. 

New felonies were created under Henry VIII. as 
quickly and easily as when Burke made his celebrated 
protest against them. It became felony to cut dykes in 
Norfolk or the Isle of Ely, to sell horses to Scotchmen, 
to poach fish between six in the evening and six in the 
morning, to come masked into a royal park in order to 
kill deer, to steal young hawks or peacocks, or to burn 
a,ny frame of timber prepared for building a house. New 
treasons were still more profusely invented, going far 
beyond the old definition of Edward III., which almost 
limited the crime to the three cases of levying war against 
the King, compassing his death, or adhering to his 
enemies. For Henry's Parliament declared at different 
times that those were traitors who ' took, judged, or 
believed' the marriages with Katherine of Aragon or 
Anne of Cleves to have been valid, who impugned 
the marriage with Anne Boleyn, who called the King a 
heretic, schismatic, or usurper, who married any of the 
King's family without his permission, who married the 
King himself without revealing past lapses, or who 
disobeyed any royal proclamation and then escaped 
h-om the kingdom. Lastly, in one peculiar case such a 
law was ex post facto. A cook named Rouse had tried 
to poison his master, the Bishop of Rochester, and 
caused the death of two persons ; such acts were there- 
fore made treasonable by a general law, which mentioned 
him by name and sentenced him to be boiled to death. 



240 The Early Tudors. 1546- 

If from the laws against ci'ime we pass on to the man- 
ner in which the Courts administered them, it is too plain 

that hardly any sound principles of justice 
Henry^vin. ^^^^ known or thought of. Else how could 

it have been that hardly any prisoners of 
state were ever acquitted ? Experience has taught us that 
evidence is generally worthless unless cross-examined, 
but rarely indeed had an accused person any such chance 
then ; not to mention that the bad habit of prosecuting, 
not for the crime, but for just so much as would bring the 
accused under the letter of the law, must have destroyed 
the chances of showing discrepancy in the evidence which 
there would have been if the witnesses had been forced to 
state all they knew. Of course a government which so 
administers justice must be cynically indifferent to one of 
its prime duties, that of showing unmistakably to all men, 
even to the culprit himself, that if the law strikes him 
it is because he has thoroughly deserved it. Not all 
Englishmen of the time had Cromwell's Italian unscru- 
pulousness — learned, as he himself said, from Macchia- 
velli — as to the means by which his ends were to be accom- 
plished ; but it is not the less true that such outrages on 
justice introduced into the national temper a mixture 
of cruelty and hypocrisy which it took centuries to eradi- 
cate. 

The barrenness of the last reign in the field of literature 
still continued, as is natural in a time when religious con- 
troversy fills all men's minds ; indeed popular poetry was 

far better represented in Scotland, which the 
tTieTeriod. Reformation had hardly yet reached, by the 

really beautiful poems of Dunbar and Ga- 
waine Douglas, the translator of Vergil, than by anything 
which England had to show at the same time. In Dun- 
bar's ' Timor mortis conturbat me,' we see here and there 



-1 547 Literature of the Reign. 241 

that Shakspere has been beforehand with us in admiring 
him, as in the grraceful stanza — 



I see that Makars (poets) amang the lave 
Plays here their pageants, syne goes to grave. 
Spared is not their faculty. 

Timor fnortis conturbat me. 

He fully deserves to be called, as he is by Professor 
Morley, the best English poet since the days of Chaucer ; 
his charming ' Without gladness avails no treasure ' is 
even alone sufficient to prove this. Gawaine Douglas, who 
was Bishop of Dunkeld under Margaret of Scotland, 
manages skilfully enough in his ' King Heart ' a stanza 
something like Ariosto's ; and his allegorical treatment 
seems to have given many hints to Spenser. Sir David 
Lindsay's verse, as Walter Scott said, ' still has charms ; ' 
his poem of ' Jock-up-aland ' ends with a fervent prayer 
that James V. may be strong enough to ' ding those 
mohy kings a' doon ' who are making Scotland so miser- 
able ; and when James freed himself from his guardians, 
Sir David was not backward in poetically teaching him 
the real meaning of liberty. In England the palm of 
satiric verse (it can hardly be called poetry) was borne by 
Skelton, who left off mocking at the great Cardinal only 
when obliged in 1528 to take sanctuary at Westminster 
and thus avoid his vengeance. His ' Colin Clout ' is on 
the need of reformation in Church and State ; in ' Speak, 
Parrot,' and 'Why come ye not to Court?' he makes his 
bitterest attacks on Wolsey ; and in ' Phylyppe Sparrow ' 
he describes with much humour a tender-hearted nun's 
grief for her lost pet. With Sir Thomas Wyatt and the 
Earl of Surrey began the refined imitation of Italian 
poetic forms ; in their hands verse seemed to become 
suddenly modern. They introduced the sonnet in English, 
Q 



242 The Early Tiidors. 1546- 

and Wyatt at least shows in his ' Renouncing of Love ' 
that he has gained from Petrarca a real sense of its capa- 
bilities ; he also in his poem on the ' Courtier's Life ' 
employs Dante's ierza rima. Surrey, too, was an inventor 
in poetry ; to him is due the first English blank verse, as 
used in a translation from the ^neid. His sonnets, 
thovigh far less melodious than Milton's, yet have the 
descriptions of personal character of which the later 
poet makes such noble use ; this may be seen in Surrey's 
sonnets on the fair Geraldine and on his faithful follower 
Richard Clere. 

The drama was at this time very much in the rough, 
though it is almost surprising to see how much Shakspere 

condescends to borrow from the humours of 
Ji!d prole. Udall's ' Ralph Roister Doister," which was 

probably written in this reign. Hey wood was 
also celebrated at the time for interludes, one of the best 
being 'The Four P's,' a dialogue between Pardoner, 
Palmer, Ponticary, and Pedlar. The honour of English 
prose was still sustained chiefly by Sir Thomas More's 
History of Edward V. and by the ' Utopia.' Theologians, 
however, did much to establish purity of style, especially 
when they wished to be simple in order to instruct the 
common people. Cranmer's ' Institution of a Christian 
Man ' is really excellent from its direct and winning ex- 
pression ; and though Hugh Latimer did not much con- 
form to any art canons, yet few Englishmen have ever 
equalled him in the power of downright preaching, espe- 
cially on semi-political subjects. Above all, of course, 
the Bible had been beautiful in Tyndal's translation, and 
was gradually advancing to that perfection which has 
won the hearts of Revisers in the present day. 

Scientific study could hardly be said to exist as yet ; 
men were far more curious to know the Latin and Greek 



-1547 English Character. 243 

names of natural objects, as Erasmus recommended, than 
to investigate their properties. Hardly any scientific 
works appear to have been sold by an Ox- 
ford bookseller whose trade diary from 1520 
onwards has been preserved. It has been already noted 
that Linacre, the most truly scientific man of the reign, 
did not describe the most remarkable diseases of his own 
time ; indeed he aimed, perhaps wisely, at restoring 
medicine through the works of the ancients rather than 
by direct observation, and devoted himself almost en- 
tirely to translations from Galen. The science of the 
day had not yet broken its connection with the occult 
sciences ; even the earnest and severe Paul III., Pope as 
he was, never held a consistory or entered upon anything 
important without consulting the stars. Henry VIII., as 
we have seen, questioned soothsayers about the sex of 
his future children with the same faith which afterwards 
made Charles I. send 500/. to an astrologer when he was 
planning his escape from Hampton Court ; he also in- 
vited to England the celebrated Cornelius Agrippa, whose 
reputation for magical knowledge was high. Alchemy 
was in great vogue at Paris, where hundreds of adepts 
were following each his own system ; in England it was 
less popular, inasmuch as the celebrated Dee, afterwards 
so favoured by Elizabeth, had to leave Cambridge- on 
beginning to study it. The belief in witchcraft was shown 
in England by the statute of 1541 already referred to; 
but only after Popes had been fulminating against it for 
fifty years and prosecutions had long been innumerable 
in France, Germany, and Italy. It is remarkable that 
the statute made it penal, not in itself, but only if it 
aimed at destroying life. 

It is always difficult clearly to discern the every-day 
character and feeling of a people in times long past. Yet we 
are not quite without hints what Englishmen were like in 



244 T^^ Early Tudors. 1546- 

the sixteenth century. The kindliness and sobriety dis- 
played here in times of pestilence have been 

Character 

of the middle noticed above. Akin to the same temper was 
the general submission to established au- 
thority, even when, without the support of any standing 
army or organised police, it was carrying the most violent 
changes. Even in the worst times a hundred yeomen 
of the guard were enough to secure Henry's person. 
Probably the real reason for this obedience was the 
same dread of renewing civil war which afterwards made 
England endure without rebelling the many misdoings 
of Charles II. Of the social temper of our countrymen 
in those days there are curiously opposite accounts. A 
French traveller complains of their hatred for all for- 
eigners, especially his countrymen ; of the bad names 
which they call them, and of the way in which they break 
their word. A German, on the other hand, cannot say 
enough of English politeness to the aged and to those 
whom they consider learned ; of their ' incredible courtesy 
and friendliness of speech,' of the beauty of the ladies, 
who, he says, ' never heretic (ketzeni) their faces with 
paint,' and, strangest of all, of the wondrous comfort, 
civility, and respect which travellers received in English 
inns. Of course the relations of English commerce to 
Germany and France, as described above, may throw 
much light on these contradictions in statement. Pleasant 
would it be to look into the interior of more families, and 
see whether there were many in England where the love 
of father and daughter was as profound as that between 
Sir Thomas More and Margaret Roper ; and into more 
meetings of heretics to search for affection like that 
between Dalaber and Garret in 1528. 'I besought Gar- 
ret,' says Dalaber, ' that he for the tender mercies of God 
would not refuse me ; saying that I trusted verily that he 
which had begun this in me would not forsake me, but 



-1547 ConsHiuiional Results of the Reign. 245 

give me grace to continue therein unto the end. When 
he heard me say so, he kissed me, the tears trickhng from 
his eyes, and said to me, " The Lord God Almighty 
grant you so to do ; and from henceforth forever take me 
for your father, and I will take you for my son in Christ." ' 
We need not enquire whether the new beliefs (or indeed 
the old ones) made men brave ; those who were first to con- 
ceive novelties or who had first to defend old things might 
be bewildered by their position, but soon there grew up 
in both a courage which literally seemed to think nothing 
of the fire. A slight forcing of language might have saved 
Lambert's life ; Forrest certainly need not have expressed 
any opinion about Cardinal Fisher's death. Yet both 
these men determinedly spoke out in spite of the terrors 
which lay before them, and would not have varied their 
mode of statement by a hair's-breadth to save their life. 
Some of the reforming party have been blamed for a flip- 
pancy and abusiveness before their judges which made it 
more difficult t o show them any indulgence ; nor can the 
charge be altogether denied. But then it is beyond most 
men to die like Latimer, with no harsh word to his perse- 
cutors, or like More, with a wish that ' he and they might 
find mercy together in a better world.' Even if some 
came short of this, their tongue-violences may be con- 
doned, since they were quite as willing to die for their 
cause as to rail at its enemies. 

Here, then, this brief summary of two reigns must 
end ; it will be for abler hands, with the help of the fresh 
material which every year now accumulates, to trace the 
gradual expulsion from our political system of the bad 
elements of Tudor despotism. To this Henry VllL, in 
spite of all appearances, contributed both negatively and 
positively. Negatively because his striking personality 
dignified in a manner the violences which he committed 
and the extravagances which he forced his Parliament 



246 The Early Tudors. 1546-7 

to enact ; so that subsequent kings of less imposing char- 
acter were likely to fail in attempting the 
Henry" like. Could his modes of government have 

viii.'s in- been established, they would have been 

stitutions. ■' 

hardly less than a Turkish despotism ; but 
they lived only in the unregulated and despotic spirit 
which they were intended to gratify, drooped and 
flagged when he was gone, and by no means uprooted 
from the minds of Englishmen the remembrance of their 
ancient liberties. And he also most unwittingly, but still 
really, gave our freedom more than one kind of positive 
help. For his rough and violent hand broke down super- 
stitions, which, though we now regard them tenderly, we 
should have been sure to denounce if we had lived at 
the time. He raised up out of the spoils of the monas- 
teries the great and strong middle class which was at 
length to curb his successors. Above all, his way of re- 
ferring constantly to Parliament, because he found it ser- 
vile, and bringing such a variety of affairs under its cog- 
nisance, had at least the effect of keeping its powers well 
in mind against the time when some fortunate election 
might send up to Westminster a body of members with 
principles worth having and a strong determination to 
make them good against all opposition. He trained Parlia- 
ment to register his edicts ', but the very fact that they had 
to do so proved their inherent right to dispute them if 
they would. Therefore when, as Burke says, new times 
brought with them new modes of tyranny, it was a light 
thing for Parliament to use against Elizabeth's monopolies, 
or James's claim that the sea-coast was his own, or 
Charles's demand for ship-money, the power which had 
been technically acknowledged in so many various forms 
and as applying to affairs so important. 

In these two ways, then, the institutions of Henry 
VIII. have favoured English freedom. 



IND EX. 



ABE 

A BERGAVENNY, Lord, 139 
•'^ Adrian VI., Pope, 143 
Agrippa, Cornelius, 243 
Albany, the Duke of, 130, 145 
Alexander VI., Pope, 53 
Alfonso of Naples, 81 
Andre, Bernard, 22 
Angus, Lord, 130 
Anne Boleyn, 156, 171, 189 
Anne Duchess of Bourbon, 17, 34, 

121 
Anne Duchess of Bretagne, 34, 37, 

59 
Anne of Cleves, 214 
Arran, the Earl of, 218, 220 
Anhur, Prince, 54 
Ascue, Anne, 233 
Aske, Robert, 201 
Audley, Chancellor, 179, 233 
Aurispa, 82 
Ayala, Don Pedro de, 54 



BARBAROSSA, iSS, 227 
Barklay, 92 
Bartons, the, 47, 109 
Barton, Elizabeth, 176 
Bell, Dr. John, 126 
Beton, Cardinal, 221 
Bothwell, Ramsay, Lord, 46 
Bourbon, the Constable, 149 
Bourchier, Sir T., 18 
Bray, Sir Reginald, 48 
Brooke, Lord, 38 
Buckingham, the Duke of, 

T40 
Bulmer, Lady, 204 



pABOT,John, 77 
^ Cabot, Sebastian, 77, iii 
Campeggio, Cardinal, 133 
Catesby, 20 



EXE 

Chapuys, 189, 190 

Charles V., the Emperor, 5, 137, 

175, 188, 225 
Charles VIII., 8, 35, 51 
Charles the Bold, 7 
Chrysoloras, Manuel, 82 
Clarence, George Dtike of, 30 
Clement VII., Pope, 149, 158, 192 
Cleves, the Duke of, 214, 227 
Clifford, the Shepherd Lord, 23 
Colet, Dean, 83, 85, 96, no 
Columbus, 76 
Commines, Philipe de, 8, 11, 17, 

Conquest, title from, 21 
Cordova, Gonzalo de, 59 
Council, the Privy, 11, 72 
Cranmer, Archbishop, 172,186, 191 
Cromwell, Lord, 169, 183, 213, 215 
Crusades projected, 56, 106, 132 
Curzon, Sir Robert, 60 



"pkACRE, Lord (of the North), 
^-^ 131, 180, 218 
Dacre, Lord (of the South), 225 
Dalaber, 244 
Darcy, Lord, 180,201 
Daubeny, Lord, 48 
Dee, Dr., 242 
Deposition, Bull of, 193 
Dorset, Marquis of, 114 
Douglas, Gawaine, 240 
Dudley, Edmund, 63, 104 
Dudley, Sir John (Lord Lisle), 222, 
230 



pDWARD IV., 12,29 
^-^ Elizabeth, Queen, 22, 

99 
Empson, Richard, 63, 104 
E;<eter, the Marquis of, 209 



248 



Index. 



■pERDINAND, of Aragon, 5, 41, 

•^ 114,135 

Fisher, Cardinal, 89, 106, 155, 160, 

178,183 
Fitzgerald, Lord Thomas, 180 
Forrest, 207, 245 
Fox, Bishop, 28, 8S 
Francis, Duke of Bretagne, 17, 34 
Francis I., 121, 133, 139, 225 
Fraternity of St. George, 69 
Frederic III., Emperor, 9, 41 
Frederic, King of Naples, 59 
Frith, 186 



/^ ALLICAN Liberties, 55 
^^ Gardiner, Bishop, 163, 

234 
Glamis, Lady, 219 
Glyn Cothi, 213 
Goch, John of, 152 
Granada, capture of, 39 
Grey, Lord Leonard, 181, 222 
Grocyn, William, 83 



216, 



H^ 



f AMILTON, Patrick, 218 
Haughton, 182 

Hawes, 92 

Henry IV., 10 

Henry V., 10 

Henry VI., 14, 62, 99 

Henry VII., his descent, 13 ; his 
title, 14 

Henry VIII., character of, 102, 167 

Henry HI. of Castile, 3 

Henry IV. of Castile, 4 

Hertford, the Earl of, 2c6 

Heywood, 242 

Howard, Sir E., 108 

Howard, Sir T. {^ee Duke of Nor- 
folk) 

Hungerford, Sir Walter, 18 

Hub, John, 151 

Hussey, Lord, 201, 204 



1NTERCURSUS MAGNUS, 
■' the, 50, 74 
Intercursus Malus, the, 61 
Isabella of Castile, 5, 55, 57 



[AMES III. of Scotland, 38 
I James IV. of Scotland, 64, 108, 
"8, 157 



MOR 

James V. of Scotland, 217 
John II. (of Castile), 4 
J nana. Queen of Spain, 55, 61 
Julius II., Pope, 62, 112 



TZ ATHERINE of France, 14 
-'-^ Katherii e Roet, 14 
Katherine of Aragon, 54, 104, 156, 

189 
Katherine Howard, 224 
Katherine Parr, 234 
Kildare, Lord, 31, 47, 66 
Kingston, Sir William, 167, 180 



T AMBERT, John, 208 
-'— ' Landois, 17 
Latimer, Hugh, 129, 207, 233 
Latimer, Lord, 202 
Lee, Bishop Roland, 213 
Lenno.x, Lady, 131 
Leo X., Pope, 120, 143, 154 
Lilly, William, 90 
Linacre, 25, 83, 243 
Lincoln, the Earl of, 31 
L'Isle, Adam, 147 
LoUardism, 152 
Louis XI., 6, 72 
Louis XII., 58, III 
Lovel, Lord, 32 
Luna, Alvaro de, 4 
Luther, Martin, 141, 153 



MACCHIAVELLI, 2 
Magdalen, Queen of Scotland, 

218 
Margaret, Queen of Scotland, 54, 

6^, 130, 145 
Margaret, the Lady, 15, 105 
Margaret of Burgundy, 30, 31, 43, 

60 
Margaret of Savoy, 35, 37, 62, 112 
Margaret Roper, 184 
Martyr, Peter (d'Angheria), 79 
Mary, Queen of France, 121 
Mary oi Guise, 217 
Mary, Queen of Scots, 220 
Maximilian, the Emperor, 45, 112, 

117, 137 
Merbeck, 234 

Merchant Adventurers, the, 49 
Meyer, Marctis, 176 
More, Sir T., 83, 84, 123, 147, 178, 

182. 



Index. 



249 



MOR 

Morton, Cardinal, 17, 28, 36, 94, ( 
Mountjoy, Lord, 86, 137 



■M: ORFOLK, the Duke of (Sir T. 
■"■^ Howard), 109, 117, 141, 202, 

211, 220, 231. 
Northumberland, the Duke of, 38 
Northumberland, the Earl of, 166 



QXFORD, John Earl of, 23, 72 



pAUL III., Pope, 183, 228, 243 

-*■ Petrarca, 81 

Philip, the Archduke, 45, 61 

Ptiilip II. of Spain, 6 

Poggio Bracciolini, 81 

Pole, Cardinal, 210 

Pole, Sir Geoffrey, 210 

Politian, 82 

Pojniings, Sir Edward, 43, 67 

Praemunire, 150, 162, 169 



R 



HYS AP THOMAS, 18, 24 
Richard III., 16, 17 
Richard Duke of York, 30 
Rochford, Lady, 225 
Rochford, Lord, 190 
Rock, Alderman, 230 



C ALISBURY, the Countess of, 22, 

*~-^ 17S, 210, 225 

Scheiner, Cardinal, 134 

Schwartz, Martin, 31 

Seymour, Jane, Queen of England, 

2f 6 
Sigismund, the Emperor, 151 
Simnel, Lambert, 31 
Skelton, 241 
Staffords, the rebellion of, 29 



YOR 

Stanley, James, Bishop of Ely, 86 

Stanley, Lord, i6, 19 

Stanley, Sir William, 19, 45 

Steelyard, the, 44 

Strange, Lord, 18 

Strode, 124 

Suffolk, Charles, 121, 157, i6r, 201 

Suffolk, Edmund Duke of, 60 

Supremacy, the Royal, 170 

Surrey, Henry Ear! of, 231 

Sweating Sickness, the, 25 



HTEROUENNE and Tournay, 

117. 
Torture in England, 12 
Tudor, Edmund, 16 
Tudor, Jasper, 16 
Tunstall, Bishop, 123, 135 
Tyndal, William, 192, 236, 242 



T TDALL, 242 

^ ' Utopia,' the, 85, 93 



A fALLA, Lorenzo, 84 
^ Vasco de Gama, 74, 73 
Venice, dominions of, 112 



WARBECK, Perkin, 42, 49 
^^ Warham, Archbishop, 43, 

105. 157) i^^» 172 
Warwick, the Countess of, 22 
Warwick, the Earl of, 21 
Waterford, 46 
Wessel, 152 
Wolsey, Cardinal, 123, 137, 147, 

157, 161 
Worde, Wynkyn de, 91, 92 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 241 



YORK, Richard Duke of, 30 



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learning and intelligence." — New York Independent. 

" The writer's diction is clear and elegant, and his narra- 
tion is free from any touch of pedantry. In the treatment of 
its prolific and interesting theme, and in its general plan, the 
book is a model of works of its class." — New York Herald. 

" We are glad to commend it. It is written clearly, and 
with care and accuracy. It is also in such neat and compact 
form as to be the more attractive." — Congregationalist. 

*** The above six volumes give the History of Rome from 
the founding of the City to the death of Marcus Aurelius 
Antoninus. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN 
HISTORY. 

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 

ENGLAND AND EUROPE AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS 

SUBSEQUENT TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 

Edited by 

Edward E. Morris. 

Eighteen volumes, i6mo, with 74 Maps, Plans, and Tables. 

Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $18.00. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES- 
England and Europe in the Ninth Century. 
By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M.A. 

"A remarkably thoughtful and satisfactory discussion of 
the causes and results of the vast changes which came upon 
Europe during the period discussed. The book is adapted to 
be exceedingly serviceable." — Chicago Standard. 

"At once readable and valuable. It is comprehensive and 
yet gives the details of a period most interesting to the student 
of history. " — Herald and Presbyter. 

"It is written with a clearness and vividness of statement 
which make it the pleasantest reading. It represents a great 
deal of patient research, and is careful and scholarly." — 
Boston Journal. 

THE NORMANS IN EUROPE— The Feudal 
System and England under the Norman 
Kings. By Rev. A. H. Johnson, M.A. 

" Its pictures of the Normans in their home, of the Scan- 
dinavian exodus, the conquest of England, and Norman 
administration, are full of vigor and cannot fail of holding the 
reader's attention." — Episcopal Register. 

" The style of the author is vigorous and animated, and he 
has given a valuable sketch of the origin and progress of the 
great Northern movement that has shaped the history of 
modern Europe." — Boston Transcript. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY 

THE CRUSADES. By Rev. G. W. Cox. 

" To be warmly commended for important qualities. The 
author shows conscientious fidelity to the materials, and such 
skill in the use of them, that, as a result, the reader has 
before him a narrative related in a style that makes it truly 
fascinating." — Congregationalist. 

" It is written in a pure and flowing style, and its arrange- 
ment and treatment of subject are exceptional." — Christian 
Intelligencer. 

THE EARLY PLANT AGEN ETS— Their 
Relation to tlie History of Europe; The 
Foundation and Growth of Constitutional 
Government. By Rev. w. Stubbs, m.a. 

"Nothing could be desired more clear, succinct, and well 
arranged. All parts of the book are well done. It may be 
pronounced the best existing brief history of the constitution 
for this, its most important period." — The Nation. 

"Prof. Stubbs has presented leading events with such fair- 
ness and wisdom as are seldom found. He is remarkably 
clear and satisfactory." — The Churchman. 

EDWARD III. By Rev. W. Warburton, M.A. 

" The author has done his work well, and we commend it 
as containing in small space all essential matter." — New York 
Independent. 

" Events and movements are admirably condensed by the 
author, and presented in such attractive form as to entertain 
as well as instruct." — Chicago Interior. 

THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK 
—The Conquest and Loss of France. By 

James Gairdner. 

"Prepared in a most careful and thorough manner, and 
ought to be read by every student. " — New York Times. 

"It leaves nothing to be desired as regards compactness, 
accuracy, and excellence of literary execution." — Boston 
Journal. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY 

THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVO- 
LUTION. By Frederic Seebohm. With Notes, on 
Books in English relating to the Reformation, by Prof. 
George P. Fisher, D. D. 

' ' For an impartial record of the civil and ecclesiastical 
changes about four hundred years ago, we cannot commend a 
better manual." — Sunday- School Times. 

"All that could be desired, as well in execution as in plan. 
The narrative is animated, and the selection and grouping of 
events skillful and effective." — The Nation. 

THE EARLY TUDORS— Henry VII., Henry 
Vni. By Rev. C. E. Moberley, M.A., late Master in 
Rugby School. 

"Is concise, scholarly, and accurate. On the epoch of which 

it treats, we know of no work which equals it." — N. Y. Observer. 

" A marvel of clear and succinct brevity and good historical 

judgment. There is hardly a better book of its kind to be 

named." — New York Independent. 

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By Rev. M. 
Creighton, M.A. 

" Clear and compact in style ; careful in their facts, and 
just in interpretation of them. It sheds much light on the 
progress of the Reformation and the origin of the Popish 
reaction during Queen Elizabeth's reign ; also, the relation of 
Jesuitism to the latter." — Presbyterian Review. 

" A clear, concise, and just story of an era crowded with 
events of interest and importance." — New York World. 

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR— 1 61 8-1 648. 

By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. 

" As a manual it will prove of the greatest practical value, 
while to the general reader it will afford a clear and interesting 
account of events. We know of no more spirited and attractive 
recital of the great era. " — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

" The thrilling story of those times has never been told so 
vividly or succinctly as in this volume." — Episcopal Register. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 

THE PURITAN REVOLUTION; and the First 
Two Stuarts, 1 603- 1 660. By Samuel Rawson 
Gardiner. 

" The narrative is condensed and brief, yet sufficiently com- 
prehensive to give an adequate view of the events related." 
— Chicago Start dard. 

' ' Mr. Gardiner uses his researches in an admirably clear 
and fair way." — Congregationalist. 

" The sketcnio concise, but clear and perfectly intelligible." 
—Hartford Courant, 

THE ENGLISH RESTORATION AND LOUIS 
XIV., from the Peace of Westphalia to the 
Peace of Nimwegen. By Osmund Airy, M.A. 

" It is crisply and admirably written. An immense amount 
Oi information is conveyed and with great clearness, the 
arrangement of the subjects showing great skill and a thor- 
ough command of the complicated theme." — Boston Saturday 
Evening Gazette. 

"The author writes with fairness and discrimination, and 
has given a clear and intelligible presentation of the time." — 
New York Evangelist, 

THE FALL OF THE STUARTS; and Western 
Europe. By Rev. Edw^ard Hale, M.A. 

" A valuable compend to the general reader and scholar." 
— Providence Journal. 

"It will be found of great value. It is a very graphic 

account of the history of Europe during the 17th century, 

and is admirably adapted for the use of students. " — Boston 

Saturday Evening Gazette. 

' 'An admirable handbook for the student. " — The Churchman, 

THE AGE OF ANNE. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 

" The author's arrangement of the material is remarkably 
clear, his selection and adjustment of the facts judicious, his 
historical judgment fair and candid, while the style wins by 
its simple elegance." — Chicago Standard. 

' ' An excellent compendium of the history of an important 
period," — The Watchman. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 

THE EARLY HANOVERIANS— Europe from 
the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Aix- 
la-Chapelle. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 

" Masterly, condensed, and vigorous, this is one of the 
books which it is a delight to read at odd moments ; which 
are broad and suggestive, and at the same time condensed ia 
treatment . " — Christian A dvocate. 

, " A remarkably clear and readable summary of the salient 
points of interest. The maps and tables, no less than the 
author's style and treatment of the subject, entitle the volume 
to the highest claims of recognition." — Boston Daily Ad- 
vertiser. 

FREDERICK THE GREAT, AND THE SEVEN 
YEARS' WAR. By F. W. Longman. 

"The subject is most important, and the author has treated 
it in a way which is both scholarly and entertaining." — The 
Churchman. 

' ' Admirably adapted to interest school boys, and older 
heads will find it pleasant reading." — New York Tribune. 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, AND FIRST 
EMPIRE. By William O'Connor Morris. With 
Appendix by Andrew D. White, LL.D., ex-President of 
Cornell University. 

"We have long needed a simple compendium of this period, 
and we have here one which is brief enough to be easily run 
through with, and yet particular enough to make entertaining 
reading." — New York Evening Post. 

" The author has well accomplished his difficult task of 
sketching in miniature the grand and crowded drama of the 
French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, showing 
himself to be no servile compiler, but capable of judicious 
and independent criticism." — Springfield Republican. 

THE EPOCH OF REFORM— 1 830-1 850. By 

Justin McCarthy. 

" Mr. McCarthy knows the period of which he writes 
thoroughly, and the result is a narrative that is at once enter- 
taining and trustworthy." — New York Examiner. 

" The narrative is clear and comprehensive, and told with 
abundant knowledge and grasp of the subject." — Boston 
Courier. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL 
WORKS. 

THE DAWN OF HISTORY. An Introduction 

to Pre-Historic Study. New and Enlarged Edition. 
Edited by C. F. Keary. i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 

This work treats successively of the earliest traces of man ; 
of language, its growth, and the story it tells of the pre-his- 
toric users of it ; of early social life, the religions, mythologies, 
and folk-tales, and of the history of writing. The present 
edition contains about one hundred pages of new matter, 
embodying the results of the latest researches. 

"A fascinating manual. In its way, the work is a model 
of what a popular scientific work should be." — Boston Sat. 
Eve. Gazette. 

THE ORIGIN OF NATIONS. By Professor George 
Rawlinson, M.A. i2mo, with maps, $1.00. 

The first part of this book discusses the antiquity of civiliza- 
tion in Egypt and the other early nations of the East. The 
second part is an examination of the ethnology of Genesis, 
showing its accordance with the latest results of modem 
ethnographical science. 

' ' A work of genuine scholarly excellence, and a useful 
offset to a great deal of the superficial current literature on 
such subjects. " — Congregationalist. 

MANUAL OF MYTHOLOGY. For the Use 
of Schools, Art Students, and General 
Readers. Founded on the Works of Pet- 
iscus, Preller, and Welcker. By Alexander 
S. Murray, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 
British Museum. With 45 Plates. Reprinted from the 
Second Revised London Edition. Crown 8vo, $1.75. 

" It has been acknowledged the best work on the subject 
to be found in a concise form, and as it embodies the results 
of the latest researches and discoveries in ancient mythologies, 
it is superior for school and general purposes as a handbook 
to any of the so-called standard works." — Cleveland Herald. 

' ' Whether as a manual for reference, a text-book for school 
use, or for the general reader, the book will be found very 
valuable and interesting." — Boston Journal. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. 

THE HISTORY OF ROME, from the Earliest 
Time to the Period of Its Decline. By Dr. 

Theodor Mommsen. Translated by W. P. Dickson, D.D., 
LL. D. Reprinted from the Revised London Edition. Four 
volumes, crown 8vo. Price per set, $8.00. 

" A work of the very highest merit ; its learning is exact 
and profound ; its narrative full of genius and skill ; its 
descriptions of men are admirably vivid." — London Times. 

"Since the days of Niebuhr, no work on Roman History 
has appeared that combines so much to attract, instruct, and 
charm the reader. Its style — a rare quality in a German 
author — is vigorous, spirited, and animated." — Dr. Schmitz. 

THE PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
From Caesar to Diocletian. By Theodor 
Mommsen. Translated by William P. Dickson, D.D., 
LL.D. With maps. Two vols., 8vo, $6.00. 

" The author draws the wonderfully rich and varied picture 
of the conquest and administration of that great circle of 
peoples and lands which formed the empire of Rome outside 
of Italy, their agriculture, trade, and manufactures, their 
artistic and scientific life, through all degrees of civilization, 
with such detail and completeness as could have come from 
no other hand than that of this great master of historical re- 
search." — Prof. W. A. Packard, Princeton College. 

THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 

Abridged from the History by Professor Theodor Mommsen, 
by C. Bryans and F. J. R. Hendy. i2mo, $1.75. 

" It is a genuine boon that the essential parts of Mommsen's 
Rome are thus brought within the easy reach of all, and the 
abridgment seems to me to preserve unusually well the glow 
and movement of the original." — Prof. Tracy Peck, Yale 
University. 

"The condensation has been accurately and judiciously 
effected. I heartily commend the volume as the most adequate 
embodiment, in a single volume, of the main results of modem 
historical research in the field of Roman affairs." — Prof. 
Henry M. Baird, University of City of New York. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. 

THE HISTORY OF GREECE. By Prof. Dr. 
Ernst Curtius, Translated by Adolphus William Ward, 
M.A., Fellow of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, Prof, of 
History in Owen's College, Manchester. Five volumes, 
crown 8vo. Price per set, $10.00. 

" We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtius' book bet- 
ter than by saying that it may be fitly ranked with Theodor 
Mommsen's great work." — London Spectator. 

"As an introduction to the study of Grecian history, no 
previous work is comparable to the present for vivacity and 
picturesque beauty, while in sound learning and accuracy of 
statement it is not inferior to the elaborate productions which 
enrich the literature of the age." — N. V. Daily Tribune. 

Ci^SAR: a Sketch. By James Anthony Froude, 
M.A. i2mo, gilt top, I1.50. 

"This book is a most fascinating biography and is by far 
the best account of Julius Caesar to be found in the English 
language. " — The London Standard. 

"He combines into a compact and nervous narrative all 
that is known of the persona), social, political, and military 
life of Caesar ; and with his sketch of Csesar includes other 
brilliant sketches of the great man, his friends, or rivals, 
who contemporaneously with him formed the principal figures 
in the Roman world." — Harper's Monthly. 

CICERO. Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero. By 

William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C. 20 Engravings. New 
Edition. 2 vols., crown 8vo, in one, gilt top, $2.50. 

The author has not only given us the most complete and 
well-balanced account of the life of Cicero ever published ; 
he has drawn an accurate and graphic picture of domestic life 
among the best classes of the Romans, one which the reader 
of general literature, as well as the student, may peruse with 
pleasure and profit. 

"A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, 
Mr. Forsyth seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the 
precise attitude which it behooves a biographer to take when 
narrating the life, the personal life of Cicero. Mr. Forsyth 
produces what we venture to say will become one of the 
classics of English biographical literature, and will be wel- 
comed by readers of all ages and both sexes, of all professions 
and of no profession at all. " — London Quarterly. 



VALUABLE WORKS ON 
CLASSICAL LITERATURE. 

THE HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE. 
From the Earliest Period to the Death of 

Marcus Aurelius. With Chronological Tables, etc., 
for the use of Students. By C. T. Cruttwell, M.A. Crovm 
8vo, $2.50. 

Mr. Cruttwell's book is written throughout from a purely 
literary point of view, and the aim has been to avoid tedious 
and trivial details. The result is a volume not only suited 
for the student, bat remarkably readable for all who possess 
any interest in the subject. 

" Mr. Cruttwell has given us a genuine history of Roman 
literature, not merely a descriptive list of authors and their 
productions, but a well elaborated portrayal of the successive 
stages in the intellectual development of the Romans and the 
various forms of expression which these took in literature." — 
N. Y. Nation. 

UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE. 

A HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. 
From the Earliest Period of Demosthenes. 

By Frank Byron Jevons, M.A., Tutor in the University 
of Durham. Crown 8vo, $2.50. 

The author goes into detail with sufficient fullness to make 
the history complete, but he never loses sight of the com- 
manding lines along which the Greek mind moved, and a 
clear understanding of which is necessary to every intelligent 
student of universal literature. 

" It is beyond all question the best history of Greek litera- 
ture that has hitherto been published." — London Spectator. 

' ' With such a book as this within reach there is no reason 
why any intelligent English reader may not get a thorough 
and comprehensive insight into the spirit of Greek literature, 
of its historic development, and of its successive and chief 
masterpieces, which are here so finely characterized, analyzed, 
and criticised." — Chicago Advance. 



TRANSLATIONS OF PLATO. 

THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO. Translated 
into English, with Analysis and Introduc- 
tions. By B. JOWETT, M.A., Master of Balliol College, 
Oxford. A new and cheaper edition. Four vols., crown 8vo, 
per set, $8.00, 

" The present work of Professor Jowett will be welcomed 
with profound interest, as the only adequate endeavor to 
transport the most precious monument of Grecian thought 
among the familiar treasures of English literature. The 
noble reputation of Professor Jowett, both as a thinker and a 
scholar, is a valid guaranty for the excellence of his perfor- 
mance." — New York Tribune. 

SOCRATES. A Translation of the Apology, 
Crito, and parts of the Phaedo of Plato. 

Containing the Defence of Socrates at his Trial, his Conver- 
sation in Prison, with his Thoughts on the Future Life, and 
an Account of his Death. With an Introduction by Professor 
W. W. Goodwin, of Harvard College. i2mo, cloth, $1.00; 
paper, 50 cents. 

TALKS WITH SOCRATES ABOUT LIFE. 
Translations from the Gorgias and the 

Republic of Plato. i2mo, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 
cents. 

A DAY IN ATHENS WITH SOCRATES. 
Translations from the Protagoras and the 

Republic of Plato. Being conversations between 
Socrates and other Greeks on Virtue and Justice. i2mo, 
cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 50 cents. 

" Eminent scholars, men of much Latin and more Greek, 
attest the skill and truth with which the versions are made ; 
we can confidently speak of their English grace and clearness. 
They seem a ' model of style,' because they are without 
manner and perfectly simple." — W. D. Howells. 

"We do not remember any translation of a Greek author 
which is a better specimen of idiomatic English than this, or 
a more faithful rendering of the real spirit of the original 
into English as good and as simple as the Greek." — New York 
Evening Post. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 



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